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BACON 



Oct. Z-'f?P° 



VERSUS 



SHAKSPERE: 



A PLEA FOR THE DEFENDANT. 



THOMAS D. KING. 



" The end crownes all ; 

And that old, common ARBITRATOR, Time, 
Will one day end it." 

Troilus and Cressida, Act iv,, Sc. 5. 



,<££e> 






MONTREAL AND ROUSES POINT, N. Y.: 
LOVELL PRINTING AND PUBLISHING COMPANY, 

1875. 



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Copyright, 
Lovell Printing and Publishing Company, 



Lake Shore Press, Rouses Point, N. Y. 



TO 
THE HONOURABLE SAMUEL CORNWALLIS MONK, 

ONE OF THE JUSTICES 

OF HER MAJESTY'S COURT OF APPEALS 

OF THE PROVINCE OF QUEBEC IN THE DOMINION OF CANADA, 

TO WHOSE PERSONAL KINDNESS AND 

ENCOURAGEMENT IN LETTERS THE AUTHOR IS INDEBTED, 

THIS BROCHURE IS DEDICATED, 

NOT ONLY AS DUE IN FRIENDSHIP, 

HUT ALSO AS A TRIBUTE TO HIS EMINENT ENDOWMENTS, AND TO 

HIS ATTAINMENTS AS A JURIS-CONSULT, 

WITH THIS REGRET, 

THAT THE WORK IS NOT COMMENSURATE WITH THE ESTEEM THE 

AUTHOR HAS SO LONG HELD FOR ONE SO DISTINGUISHED 

FOR HIS RIPE AND SOUND SCHOLARSHIP. 



PREFACE. 



He who opens this little book under the expectation 
of finding an exhaustive defence of Shakspere against the 
" Baconian Theorists" and an absolute establishment of 
his authorship had better close it, because it has no pre- 
tensions to be a complete thesis on the subject, although 
the various arguments follow some kind of order, though 
perhaps, irregular. 

The writer has simply given expression to his belief in 
Shakspere as the author of " the best plays in our lan- 
guage," and his unbelief in Bacon's authorship of them. 

He lays no claim to originality, because most of 
his arguments must have presented themselves to many 
readers and students of both Shakspere and Bacon, though 
they may not have been publicly expressed. 

He lays no claim to scholarship, neither is he desirous 
to appear learned, nor to be puffed up with the vanity of 
authorship, but he is desirous — as every man should be, to 
defend his friend from " back-wounding-calumny " — to 



shield the character of Shakspere, from the shafts of 
malice aimed at his reputation as a man and an author. 

The calumny of Nathaniel Holmes and the " Baconian 
Theorists " would soon " starve and die of itself if nobody 
took it in and gave it lodging ; " but as it is to be found 
in the libraries of Jurists and Scholars, in the closets of 
Divines and Students, on the book-shelves of Skeptics, and 
in the drawing-rooms' of the Dilettanti, the writer hopes 
this plea for Shakspere, will prove an antidote to slander's 
"poison'd shot." 

Montreal, 
February 27, 1875. 




BACON versus SHAKSPERE. 

Novei int universi per presentes. 

The master-spirits and the most command- 
ing intellects of the past and present century 
have with one consent believed that William 
Shakspere, of Stratford-upon-Avon, in the 
County of Warwick, gentleman, was the author 
of the plays collected and published in 1623 
by John Heminge and Henry Condell, and 
humbly consecrated to the most noble and 
incomparable paire of brethren William, Earle 
of Pembroke, &c, &c, and Philip, Earle of 
Montgomery, &c, both Knights of the most 
noble order of the Garter, and our singular 
good Lordes, and entitled Mr. William Shakes- 
peare's Tragedies, Comedies, and Histories 
published according to the True Originall 
Copies ; notwithstanding, Wm. Hy. Smith, in a 
letter to Lord Ellesmere, dated 1856, attempted 
to prove that the plays called Shakspere's were 



6 BACON versus SHAKSPERE. 

written by Bacon, but he did not make good 
his postulate; nevertheless, there has arisen 
another champion in the seventh decade of the 
nineteenth century, a giant who has made a 
challenge against any disciple of Shakspere 
that would come out and fight him, throwing 
down the gauntlet with this scoffing, and auda- 
cious, if not blasphemous utterance : — " We 
worship in Jesus what belongs to Plato; in 
Shakspere what belongs to Bacon? 

This exalted giant is not singular, but plural : 
his name is legion. He speaks with authority : 
he assumes the style and title of Majesty itself. 
The word WE is a most important sound. 
This lusty challenger denies the existence of 
Shakspere as a Dramatist and Poet though it 
be attested by tradition, testimony, coincidences, 
and consecrated by time. 

It has been written " that there shall come 
in the last days scoffers," and of others, it has 
been said, that they should have sent "them 
strong delusion that they should believe a 
lie." 



BACON versus SHAKSPERE. 7 

Of the temerity of Nathaniel Holmes and 
other authors of the " Baconian Theory " there 
can be no doubt, and, perhaps, my temerity will 
not be questionable if I trespass upon the 
patience of my readers, after so much has been 
written on the subject by men who have won 
their spurs in the lists of English Literature ; 
yet, I trust in being pardoned for slinging a 
stone at this " literary Goliath" compared with 
whom, in hardihood, the most of our modern 
Shaksperian critics are in point of fact 

" as that small infantry 
Warr'd on by cranes." 

The general and almost universal concession 
of our modern playwrights and actors of any 
culture, or note, has been that the author of 
the plays which common belief and tradition 
assign to Shakspere, were, and must have been 
written by a man most thoroughly acquainted 
with "stage business," therefore, it may be 
assumed that that man was not Bacon. 

There are, to my mind, other things to be 



8 BACON versus SHAKSPERE. 

considered which are conclusively against the 
"Baconian Theory" and though I may not 
have the gownman's skill, " truth from specious 
falsehood to divide," I shall endeavour to dis- 
cuss fairly and dispassionately the obvious im- 
probabilities of the " theory." 

Imprimis. — It can be clearly shown by ref- 
erence to Collier's Annals of the Stage that 
Heminge and Condell, the friends and fellow- 
theatrical proprietors, and literary executors of 
Shakspere, (though not officially appointed,) 
were well ordered in their behaviour and just 
in all their dealings. For upwards of thirty 
years they had lived in good repute, and, doubt- 
less by inference, they " kept their hands from 
picking and stealing, and their tongues from 
evil-speaking, lying and slandering, and did 
their duty in that state of life into which it had 
pleased God to call them." From their long 
intimacy with Shakspere, their daily converse 
with him during the theatrical seasons at the 
" Globe and Blackfriars," their companionship 
in travel, their consultations with him relative 



BACON versus SHAKSPERE. 9 

to readings, cues, and stage business, they must 
have known whether he was or was not the 
author of the plays dedicated in 1623 to the 
Earles Pembroke and Montgomery. If Shaks- 
pere was not known to them as the author, then 
they practiced a lie upon those " singular good 
lordes," for the proper notion of a lie is an 
endeavouring to deceive another by signifying 
that to him as true, which we ourselves think 
not to be so. Who shall dare say Heminge 
and Condell lied? Could these men be not 
only deceivers and hypocrites, but ingrates to 
those " most incomparable paire of brethren," 
whom no man could " come neare but with a 
kind of religious addresse," and who " prose- 
quuted " Shakspere, when living, with so much 
favour, " using him after their own honour and 
dignity ! " Was their false dedication fitting to 
" a payre so carefull to shew their gratitude to 
both the living and the dead ? "* 



* Pembroke, the son of Mary, the sister of that 
chivalrous and truly noble man, Sir Philip Sidney, 
was, according to his biographer, not only a great 



i o BA CON versus SHA KSPERE. 

Could rare Ben Jonson, who is worthy of 
our love and respect, have lied, in consequence 
of the close friendship which existed between 
Shakspere and himself, when he wrote under 
Droeshout's print, facing the title page of the 
1623 edition, the following significant lines, 
meagre and generalizing though they be : — 



favourer of learned and ingenious men, but learned 
himself. He was universally loved and esteemed, 
had a good proportion of learning, and a ready wit to 
apply and enlarge upon it. He had a large fortune, 
which he used nobly, and as his conversation was 
most with men of the most pregnant parts and under- 
standing, he must have known both Shakspere and 
Bacon, and would at once not only have detected 
Heminge and Condell's lie, but resented and pun- 
ished it. Again, Pembroke was very liberal towards 
literary men, who needed support or encouragement, 
and doubtless had been munificent to Shakspere and 
his fellows, judging from Heminge and Condell's 
"Epistle Dedicatorie" commencing — "Whilst we 
studie to be thankful in our particular, for the many 
favours we have received from your Lordeshipes." 
The " Epistle Dedicatorie " is in itself very strong 
circumstantial evidence against Nathaniel Holmes' 
theory — if not absolutely conclusive. 



BA CON versus SHAKSPERE. i ! 

" This Figure, that thou here seest put 
It was for gentle Shakespeare cut ; 
Wherein the Graver had a strife 

With Nature to out-doo the life : 
O, could he but have drawne his wit 

As well in brasse as he hath hit 
His face ; the Print would then surpasse 

All that was ever writ in brasse. 
But, since he cannot, Reader, looke 

Not on his picture, but HIS BOOKE." 

" What a goodly outside falsehood " had 
when Shakspere, himself, dedicated the first 
heir of his invention, "VENUS AND 
ADONIS," to the gallant and literary Henry 
Wriothesly, Earle of Southampton, a noble- 
man whose public and private virtues were 
notorious, and whose liberality to men of 
genius and learning was one of his highest 
titles to praise. 

In reference to the noble Earle's liberality 
and friendship to Shakspere, Rowe says that 
there was a story, handed down by Sir William 
Davenant, that " my Lord Southampton at one 
time gave Shakspere a thousand pounds to 
enable him to go through with a purchase 



12 BACON versus SHAKSPERE. 

which he heard he had a mind to." The story, 
though probable, may want confirmation as to 
the amount, but when Shakspere afterwards 
dedicates to the noble Earle " The Rape of 
Lucrece" he alludes to his munificence in 
these words : — 

" The warrant of your honourable disposition 
not the worth of my untutored lines, makes it 
assured of acceptance. What I have done is 
yours ; what I have to do is yours ; being in 
part in all I have, devoted yours." 

From these sentences it may be inferred that 
Shakspere had tasted largely of the Earle's 
bounty. Words of acknowledgment could 
scarcely be stronger. 

Did Shakspere practice a deceit upon his 
noble and generous patron ? Could he be 
guilty of a lie ? Could he make lies his refuge, 
and under falsehood hide himself to get the 
bounty of this Earle ? 

Earl Southampton in a letter, a transcript of 
which {copia vera), found in the Ellesmere col- 
lection, writes to some nobleman, in behalf of 



BA CON versus SHA KSPERE. 1 3 

the players interested in the " Blackfriars " gene- 
rally, and of Shakspere and Burbage in par- 
ticular, at a time when the Lord Mayor of 
London threatened the destruction of the 
Blackfriars Play-house : — 

" These bearers are two of the chief of the 
" company ; one of them, by name Richard 
" Burbage, who humbly sueth for your Lord- 
" ship's kind help ; for that he is a man famous 
" as our English Roscius ; one who fitteth the 
" action to the word, and the word to the action 
" most admirably. By the exercise of his 
" quality, industry and good behaviour, he has 
" become possessed of the Blackfriars Play- 
" house, which has been employed for plays 
"sithence it was builded by his father, now 
" near fifty years agone. 

" The other is a man no whit less deserving 
"favour, and my especial friend ; till of late an 
" actor of good account in the company, now, a 
" sharer in the same, and writer of some of our 
" best English plays, which, as your Lordship 
" knoweth, were most singularly liked of Queen 



i 4 BACON versus SHAKSPERE. 

" Elizabeth, when the company was called upon 
" to perform before Her Majesty at Court at 
" Christmas and Shrovetide, &c, &c. — both are 
" right famous in their qualities, though it 
" longeth not of your Lordship's gravity and 
" wisdom to resort unto the places where they 
" are wont to delight the public ear." 

" Their trust and suit now is not to be 
" molested in their way of life, whereby they 
" maintain themselves and their wives and fami- 
" lies (both being married and of good repttta- 
" Hon), as well as the widows and orphans of 
" some of their dead fellows." 

This document has been avowed, by those 
best competent to judge, to be a genuine and 
authentic manuscript of the period ; if so, what 
a lesson it conveys to this selfish generation — 
the true Nobility of aristocracy, and that pure 
religion which " visits the fatherless and the 
widows in their affliction." 

Ben Jonson, envious as he was of Shaks- 
pere, and even girded at his York and Lan- 
caster plays, at " The Winter's Tale " and 



BACON versus SHAKSPERE. i 5 

" The Tempest ", in the prologue to " Every 
Man in his Humour," acknowledges Shaks- 
pere's good qualities as a man in these words : — 

" I loved the man, and do honour his memory, 
" on this side idolatry, as much as any ; he was 
" indeed honest, and of cm open and free nature, 
" had an excellent fancy, brave notions, and 
"gentle expressions." All who addressed him 
seem to have uniformly connected his name 
with the epithets — worthy, gentle and be- 
loved. 

Liars are not made out of gentle, worthy 
and beloved men, possessing also open and free 
natures. 

Bacon, in his Essay on Simulation and Dis- 
simulation, says : — 

" Certainly the ablest men that ever were, 
" have all had an openness and frankness of 
"dealing, and a name of certainty and vera- 
" city." 

Now, Shakspere would have been guilty of 
dissimulation, or rather simulation, by pretend- 
ing to be the author of the "Venus and 



1 6 BACON versus SHAKSPERE. 

Adonis " and the u Rape of Lucrece " when 
he was not Heminge and Condell would also 
be guilty of simulation by a suppositious foist- 
ing upon the Earls of Pembroke and Mont- 
gomery " The Workes of William Shakes- 
peare, truly set forth from the originall," if 
they were not. 

But the " Baconian Theorists " are honour- 
able men, all of them, yet they virtually charge 
Shakspere, Ben Jonson, Heminge and Condell 
with being robbers and liars, and my noble and 
"singular good Lordes," Pembroke, Mont- 
gomery and Southampton with being abettors 
and accessories : — * 

" He that filches from me my good name 
Robs me of that which not enriches him." 

Shakspere, Ben Jonson, Heminge and Con- 



* The honour of these most noble earls is above sus- 
picion. They could not have been privy to any liter- 
ary deception. We may as well imagine that Edward 
Geoffrey Stanley, fourteenth Earl of Derby, or 
George William Frederic Villiers, Earl of Clarendon, 
could have been liars and deceivers. 



BA CON versus SHA KSPERE. 1 7 

dell, who were honourable men in their genera- 
tion, must have conspired together to rob Bacon 
of his fame ; and those accomplished scholars and 
gentlemen, Pembroke and Southampton, friends 
of Bacon's benefactor, Essex, must have been 
participators in Shakspere's deceit in assuming 
merits which he did not really possess, if they 
had the least suspicion in their minds that he 
was not the author of the plays and poems 
dedicated to them. 

What a hypocrite or simulator Ben Jonson 
must have been, considering his intimacy with 
Bacon, translating his writings into Latin, to ap- 
ply to Shakspere, in his glowing eulogy, words 
due to Bacon ; for it is hard to conceive that 
Bacon could have kept his dramatic writings, 
poems, and sonnets a secret from Jonson, how- 
ever much he may have thought such things too 
frivolous for a great philosopher. What makes 
the matter look worse is the statement of 
Nathaniel Holmes, if it is worth anything, 
wherein he says : — 

"In fact it would be well-nigh incredible that 



1 8 BACON versus SHAKSPERE. 

a scholar like Ben Jonson, who was so famil- 
iar with Bacon and his writings, as he must 
have been, should not have discovered the 
hand and soul of Francis Bacon in these plays 
of Shakspere as certainly as a Bernouilli the 
genius of Newton in the anonymous solution 
of a mathematical problem — ex unque Leonem 
— especially when he ventured to write in this 
manner in the Sonnets : — " 

Why is my verse so barren of new pride ? 
So far from variation or quick change ? 
Why with the time I do not glance aside 
To new found methods, and to compounds strange ? 
Why write I still all one, ever the same, 
And keep invention in a noted weed, 
That every word doth almost tell my name, 
Shewing their birth, and where they did proceed ? 

Sonnet lxvi. 

It is not shown that Ben Jonson did make 
the discovery! Was it from his want of per- 
ception ? or was it not, the rather, from his cer- 
tain knowledge that Bacon was not the author 
of the plays, and that Shakspere was ? — hence 
no necessity nor opportunity for discovering 
what never existed ! 



BA CON versus SHA KSPERE. i g 

Nathaniel Holmes surmises that Bacon had 
confided his authorship of the Venus and 
Adonis to a few friends who can keep a secret, 
and intimates, or rather insinuates, that South- 
ampton will not object to the use of his name 
to the dedication, and Shakspere will be ready 
to appear as the author of these poems. The 
chivalrous high-souled Southampton, and the 
great Shakspere dissemblers ! This maligning 
of the dead is monstrous, and makes one feel 
as indignant as Emilia was when Othello sus- 
pected the chastity of Desdemona. 

Now for Jonson's eulogy, ending thus : — 

Shine forth thou star of poets ; and with rage, 
Or influence, chide, or cheer, the drooping stage ; 
Which, since thy flight from hence, hath mourn'd 

like night, 
And despairs day, but for thy volume's light." 

I believe it to be the genuine welling-up of 
Jonson's overcharged heart; his spring of 
gratitude for Shakspere 's kindness and magna- 
nimity in obtaining a first hearing of " Every 
Man in his Humour," and his painstaking in 
not only bringing the play before the public, 



20 BACON versus SHAKSPERE. 

but acting a part in it, together with Burbage, 
Heminge, and Condell ; otherwise the play 
would in all probability have been consigned to 
" Limbo Patrum" and had no " other au- 
dience but the Tribulation of Tower Hill, 
or the limbs of Limehouse, their dear broth- 
ers."* Shakspere's plays at this time rilled the 
theatre, while Jonson's would hardly pay 
expenses. 

This magnanimity of Shakspere's finds 
almost its expression in his Hamlet, Act II. 
Sc. 2 : — 

" The less they deserve, the more merit in 
your bounty ; " 

which is a pearl of most noble and generous sen- 
timent, worthy to be treasured in our minds — 
the divine lesson of Charity — no indwelling of 
Jonson's envious girds, but the rather over- 
coming unkindness with kindness. Of such 
magnanimity dissembling is not begotten. 

What does Milton, that large-hearted Puri- 



* Henry VIIL, Act V. Sc. 3. 



BA CON versus SHA KSPERE. 2 1 

tan * and the writer of England's noblest Epic, 
say in that magnificent eulogy of his, appended 
to the folio 1632 : — 

"What neede my Shakespeare for his honour'd bones 
The labour of an Age in piled stones, 
Or that his hallow'd Reliques should be hid 
Under a star-y pointing Pyramid ? 
Dear Sonne of Memory, great Heire of Fame, 
What needst such dull witness of thy Name ? 
Thou in our wonder and astonishment 
Hast built thyselfe a lasting Monument: 
For whilst, to th' shame of slow-endeavouring Art, 
Thy easie numbers flow, and that each heart 
Hath from the leaves of thy unvalued Booke 
Those Delphicke Lines with deep Impression tooke ; 
Then thou, our fancy of herself bereaving, 
Dost make us Marble with too much conceiving \ 
And, so Sepulcher'd, in such pompe dost lie, 
That Kings for such a Tombe would wish to die." 

Could Milton have had any doubt what 
manner of man Shakspere was? Would he 
not, writing within a few years of Shakspere 's 
death, have had a better knowledge of the 



* The word is not used in the sense that the author 
of Hudibras employs — but in its pure significance — 
pure-minded man. 



22 BA CON versus SUA KSPERE. 

authorship than the " Baconian Theorists ? " 
Milton, as a poet, scarcely rivalled by Homer 
and Virgil, a man of immense learning and 
erudition, a mathematician, a logician, a master 
of the Greek and Latin languages, a man with a 
quick apprehension, a sublime imagination and 
a piercing judgment, would, from his knowledge 
of the writings of both Shakspere and Bacon, 
have discovered what our literary Goliath 
imagines he has so cleverly, namely: — such a 
similarity or similitude in thought, diction, 
style, manner and language between the Phi- 
losopher and the Poet, that Bacon must have 
been Shakspere, but Milton evidently did not 
make the discovery. Again, could Milton have 
had any doubt that William Shakspere, in his 
lifetime, an actor and playwright in company 
with Heminge and Condell at the Blackfriars 
theatre, and, at his death, buried in the chancel 
of the Church of Holy Trinity, Stratford-on- 
Avon, was the author of the "Midsummer 
Night's Dream," which afforded him so much 
delight that he should apply these words, or 



BACON versus SHAKSPERE. 23 

rather epithets, to Shakspere — " dear Sonne of 
Memory " — " honour'd bones " — " Hallow'd 
Reliques " — the word hallowed is rarely, if ever, 
applied by English scholars to other than holy 
and sanctified beings and places. Hallowed* 
only occurs five times in Milton's " Paradise 
Lost." f 

Milton means what he says ; and means it 
with his strength too, he is not a loose writer ; 
" he," as Ruskin says, " generally puts the whole 
strength of his spirit into his sayings," and 
there is something very potent and significant 
in the last monosyllabic line of his eulogy, 
" That Kings for such a Tombe would wish to 
die" 

A well known American authoress % nas 



* The word is rarely used in the Bible, once only in 
the New Testament. The Sabbath is hallowed, and 
things pertaining to the Temple, and the name of 
" Our Father who art in Heaven." 

fBook III. 31 ; Book IV. 964; Book V. 321 ; 
Book VII. 592 ; Book XL 106. 

tMrs. H. B. Stowe. 



24 BACON versus SHAKSPERE. 

noticed the similitude between certain passages 
in " Lycidas " and " Comus " and the " Mid- 
summer Night's Dream ; " she says : — " In his 
earlier poems, Milton seems, like Shakspere, to 
have let his mind run freely, as a brook warbles 
over many-coloured pebbles; whereas in his 
great poem he built after models. Had he 
known less Latin and Greek, the world, instead 
of seeing a well arranged imitation of the 
ancient epics from his pen, would have seen 
inaugurated a new order of Poetry." The 
Rev. Thomas Warton says there is good reason 
to suppose that Milton threw many additions 
and corrections into the Theatrum Poetarum, 
a book published by his nephew, Edward 
Philips, in 1675. It contains criticisms far 
above the taste of that period. Among these 
is the following judgment on Shakspere, which 
was not then the general opinion : — " In trag- 
edy, never any expressed a more lofty and 
tragical height, never any represented nature 
more purely to the life ; and where the polish- 
ments of art are most wanting, as probably his 



BA CON versus SHA KSPERE. 2 5 

learning was not extraordinary, he pleases with 
a certain wild and native elegance." 
This certainly smacks of Milton's 

" sweetest Shakespeare, Fancy's child, 

Warbles his native wood notes wild" 

Such a parallel in Bacon to Shakspere as 
wild and native elegance, to native woods notes 
wild, would be an argument with Nathaniel 
Holmes to assert Bacon's authorship of both. 

Stevens asks : — What greater praise can any 
poet have received than that of the author of 
Paradise Lost? I may ask who could be a 
better judge as to the real authorship of the 
plays ? Could Milton have been deceived ? 

Francis Meres, a contemporary of Shaks- 
pere's, published in 1598a work called " Pal- 
ladis Tamia " — Wit's Treasury — in one division 
or chapter of which, is " A comparative dis- 
course of our English Poets with the Greek, 
Latin and Italian Poets. In this discourse, the 
first criticism 'on Shakspere that ever appeared 
in print, occurs the following : — 



2 6 BA CON versus SUA KSPERE. 

" As Plautus and Seneca are accounted the 
" best for Comedy and Tragedy among the 
" Latines : so Shakespeare among the English 
" is the most excellent in both kinds for the 
" stage ; for Comedy, witness his Gentlemen of 
" Verona, his Errors, his Love labors lost, his 
" Love labours wonne, his Midsummers night 
" dreame ; & his Merchant of Venice : for 
" Tragedy his Richard ii, Richard Hi, Henry 
" iv, King John, Titus Andronicus, and his 
" Romeo & Juliet. 

Richard Grant White, in his Memoirs of 
Shakspere, says : — " Meres was a Master of 
Arts in both Universities, and a theological 
writer, etc. His comparative discourse makes 
no pretence to analysis or esthetic judgment, 
but it may be accepted as a record of the 
estimation in which Shakespeare was held by 
intelligent and cultivated people when he was 
thirty-four years old, and before he had written 
his best plays ". 

In the discourse of Meres, comparisons are 
instituted between Horace and Sir Philip 



BACON versus SHAKSPERE. 27 

Sidney, Shakspere, Spenser, Drayton and 
Warner ; between the Greek and Latin Tragic 
poets and Shakspere, Jonson, Chapman, Dray- 
ton and Marlow ; * between the Greeks famous 
for Elegie and Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey, 
Sir Thomas Wyat the Elder, Sir Walter 

* As the Greeke tongue is made famous and elo- 
quent by Homer, Hesiod, Euripides, JEschilus, So- 
phocles, Pindarus, Phocylides, and Aristophanes ; and 
the Latine tongue by Virgill, Ovid, Horace, Silius 
Italicus, Lucanus, Lucretius, Ansonius, and Claud- 
ianus : so the English tongue is mightily enriched, 
and gorgeouslie invested in rare ornaments and re- 
splendent abiliments by Sir Philip Sidney, Spencer, 
Daniel, Drayton, Warner, Shakespeare, Marlow, and 
Chapman. 

As Epius Stolo said, that the Muses would speak 
with Plautus tongue, if they would speak Latin : so 
I say that the Muses would speak with Shakespeare s 
fine filed phrase, if they would speake English. 

As Pindarus, Anacreon, and Callimachus among the 
Greekes ; and Horace and Catullus among the Latines 
are the best Lyrick Poets : so in this faculty the best 
among our Poets are Spencer (who excelleth in all 
kinds) Daniel, Drayton, Shakespeare, Bretton. 



28 BACON versus SHAKSPERE. 

Raleigh, Sir Edward Dyer, Shakspere, Spenser 
and others ; but not Francis Bacon, M. P. 
Queen's Counsel extraordinary, age 38 years ; 
his name appears nowhere in Meres's Discourse. 

Wherefore ? echo says Wherefore ? — Be- 
cause, according to Nathaniel Holmes, he had 
no desire to be classed with such a Glorious 
Company of Poets, but the rather that his 
fame should rest upon his scientific and philo- 
sophical works, which, in my opinion it ab- 
solutely does, and upon nothing else — surely 
the threading the labyrinth of all philosophy 
and scaling with ladders the heights of the 
empyrean is glory enough for one mortal. 

John Weever in a small bundle of E PI- 
GRAMMES, in the oldest cut and newest 
fashion, published in 1599, has the following: — 

Epig. 22. Ad Gulielmum Shakespeare. 

Honie-tong'd Shakespeare, when I saw thine issue, 

I swore Apollo got them and none other, 

Their rosie-tainted features cloth'd in tissue, 

Some heaven born goddesse said to be their mother : 

Rose-checkt Adonis with his amber tresses, 

Faire fire-hot Venus charming him to love her, 



BACON versus SHAKSPERE. 29 

Chaste Lucretia virgine-like her dresses, 
Prowd lust-stung Tarquine seeking still to prove her : 
Romca, Richard ; more, whose names I know not, 
Their sugred tongues, and power attractive beuty 
Say they are Saints, althogh that Sts they show not, 
For thousands vowes to them subjective dutie : 
They burn in love thy childre Shakespear het the 
Go, wo thy Muse more Nymphish brood beget them. 

In a work entitled " the Excellencie of the 
English tongue, by R. C. of Anthony, Esquire to 
W. C," written about 1595-6, and inserted by 
\Y. Camden after his Chapter on " Languages," 
in " Remaines concerning Britaine," p. 43 Lon- 
don by John Legatt, 16 14 [40 C. 57. Art. Seld : 
Press-mark^ (Not in the first edition 1605.) — re- 
printed by the New Shakspere Society under 
the heading " Shakspere Alhision-Books" — Rich- 
ard Carew, the author, says : — " The long words 
that we borrow beino- intermino;led with the 

o o 

short of our owne store, make up a perfect har- 
monie, by culling out from which mixture (with 
judgement) you may frame your speech accord- 
ing to the matter you must worke on, majesti- 
call, pleasant, delicate, or manly more or lesse, 
in what sort you please. Adde hereunto, that 



3 o BACON versus SHAKSPERE. 

whatsoever grace any other language carrieth 
in Verse or Prose, in Tropes or Metaphors, in 
Ecchoes and Agnominations, they may all bee 
lively and exactly represented in ours : will you 
have Platoes Veine ? reade Sir Thomas Smith, 
— the Ionicke ? Sir Thomas Moore. Ciceroes ? 
Ascham, Varro ? Chaticer, Demosthenes ? Sir 
John Cheeke (who in his treatise to the Rebels, 
hath comprised all the figures of Rhetorick). 
Will you reade Virgill ? take the Earle of 
Surrey. Catullus Shakespheare, and Barlowes 
fragment, Ovid? Daniell, Lucan ? Spencer, 
Martial ? Sir John Davies and others ." * 



* Richard Carew, who doubtless was a reader and 
a scholar has no comparison for Bacon — his name is 
not mentioned at this date 1595-6 — although 36 years 
of age. He evidently had produced nothing worthy 
the encomiums of his contemporaries up to that time — 
He only received his degree of M. A. — and that hon- 
orary — on the 27th of July, 1594 — his first instalment 
of the Essays were not published before 1598 — The 
same year, according to Francis Meres, as before 
quoted, Shakspere had written 6 comedies and 6 
tragedies. 



BACON versus SHAKSPERE. 31 

In WILLOBIE HIS AVISA, or the 

true picture of a modest Maid and of a chast 
and constant wife, imprinted at London by 
John Windet, 1594, Shakspere's Lucrece is thus 
alluded to : 

Though Collatine have deerely bought ; 
To high renowne, a lasting life, 
m And found, that most in vaine have sought, 

To have a Faire, and Constant wife, 

Yet Tarquyne pluckt his glistering grape, 
And Shakespeare, paints poore Lucrece rape. 

In Polimanteia, or, The means lawfull and 
unlaw full to judge of the fall of a common 
wealth, against the frivolous and foolish con- 
jectures of this age; Whereunto is added, A 
Letter from England to her three daughters, 
Cambridge, Oxford, Innes of Court, and to all 
the rest of her inhabitants : perswading them 
to a constant unitie of what religion soever they 
are, for the defence of our dread Soveraigne, 
and native country : most requisite for this 
time wherein wee now live, [1595], we find in a 



32 BACON versus SHAKSPERE 

marginal note : — " All praise worthy Lucrecia. 
Sweet Shakspeare !* 

Why quote these things ? Surely, say the 
" Baconian Theorists," the contemporaries of 
Shakspere could not be as good judges as we 
are ; they have all been deceived ; under the 
light of our judicious criticisms, the cloud of 
their ignorance will now be dispelled. We 
want no collateral evidence. We rely on par- 
allelisms — If Bacon is the author of Novum 
Organum, The Essays &c. &c, he must be 
the author of Shakspere 's plays, they are the 
same in subject, idea, and language ; all other 
evidence is superfluous. 

f Touchstone says : — " I knew when seven 
" Justices could not take up a quarrel ; but when 
" the parties were met themselves, one of them 
" thought but of an I F, as If you said so, 



* See Shakspere Allusion-Books, edited by C. M. 
Ingleby, MA., L.L.D., &c, published by the New 
Shakspere Society, 1874. 

t As You Like It. Act V., Sc. 4. 



BACON versus SHAKSPERE. s 3 

" then I said so ; and they shook hands, and 
" swore brothers. Your If is your only peace 
" maker ; much virtue in If. " 

Much virtue in that oily monysyllable Iff 
Truly, my " motley fool," much virtue. The 
" Baconian Theorists " are full of hypothetical 
and "glibbery" propositions. 

If Shakspere's dedication of the first heir 
of his invention, " Venus and Adonis " is a 
deceit, or, in another word, a lie, and my Lord 
Southampton accepted the dedication, rewarded 
the filcher, called him " my especial friend" 
and dubb'd him " writer of so?ne of our best 
English plays" without knowing any of 
Shakspere's antecedents [which is very improb- 
able, unless the copia vera is a lie\ where shall 
we seek for truth ? 

If Shakspere is a fraud, and my Lord 
Southampton an egregious dupe, there need be 
no further question in the matter, as learned 
critics have never doubted that the sonnets, 
poems, and plays were the work of one and the 
same author. 



34 BACON versus SHAKSPERE. 

Were Shakspere, Ben Jonson and Milton 
liars? were my Lords Pembroke and South- 
ampton egregiously duped ? If so, then it mat- 
ters not to us who wrote the plays ; all our 
faith in manhood will be gone, chaos will have 
come again — and we shall ask ourselves where 
shall we find a man with sufficient light in 
himself to say Fiat Lux, and out of chaos 
make a Shakspere ? or to endow any piece of 
mortality with such power of vision and faculty 
of thought as Shakspere ? Will a whole Bench 
of Philosophical Jurists such as Bacon make up 
such a compound as Shakspere ? Are all our 
great traditions, and glorious memories, and 
monuments of antiquity, and hallowed spots to 
be swept away by an, If ? Are we to be cheated 
of our heritage and birthright by a mere 
hypothesis or sophism ? No ! — Nothing short of 
absolute proof, something more relative we 
must have than Othello's handkerchief, venera- 
ted as the dying gift of his mother, endowed 
with supernatural virtues, embroidered with 
rare silk, spun from hallowed worms, given to 



BACON versus SHAKSPERE. 35 

Desdemona, and found wiping the beard of 
Michael Cassio ; ere we can doubt Shakspere's 
authorship ! Let the " Theorists" produce in 
Bacon's hand writing any of the sonnets or 
poems attributed to Shakspere, or the hand 
writing of Southampton acknowledging his 
guilty participation in the false dedication of 
the " Venus and Adonis " and " Lucrece " ; then, 
however much we may regret the discovery, we 
shall consent to the dethronement of Shakspere. 

My Lord Southampton, by accepting the 
dedication, and rewarding the dedicator, has 
conclusively, to my mind, established the 
authorship of " Venus and Adonis," and " The 
Rape of Lucrece," unless he was guilty of 
simulation, a crime inconsistent with his career, 
and his highly chivalrous and daring spirit 

Bolingbroke says : — " Simulation and dis- 
simulation, for instance, are the chief arts of 
cunning : the first will be esteemed always by 
a wise man unworthy of him, in every possible 
case. According to South, simulation is the 
pretending that to be which is not. 



3 6 BACON versus SHAKSPERE. 

It is said that Bacon was much in the habit 
ot writing sonnets ; some of them were ad- 
dressed to the Queen, some were written for 
Essex, to be addressed to her in his name ; and 
one, at least, was commended by great persons. 

Bacon writes in the apology concerning 
Essex : — " A little before Michaelmas term, 
(1599) her Majesty had a purpose to dine at 
my lodge at Twickenham, at which time I had, 
though I profess not to be a poet, prepared a 
sonnet, directly tending and alluding to draw 
on her Majesty's reconcilement to my Lord ; 
which I remember, also, I shewed to a great 
person and one of my Lord 's nearest friends 
(Southampton ?) who commended it." 

This certainly smacks of simulation — Essex 
getting credit for a sonnet written by Bacon, 
and Bacon professing not to be a poet, when 
at the same time the Poems had been dedicated. 
The Comedies and Tragedies, mentioned by 
Francis Meres, had also been either published 
or acted ; these are enough to establish a last- 
ing reputation for any poet. 



BA CON versus SHA KSPERE. 3 7 

The world has not been favoured with 
Bacon's mellifluous sonnets addressed to the 
Queen, nor his Masques rivalling " Comus," 
nor his monodies on Essex and Raleigh rivalling- 
" Lycidas," of which it has been said, " on such 
sacrifices the gods themselves throw incense ; 
and one would almost wish to have died for the 
sake of having been so lamented." Much stress 
is laid upon these sonnets and Bacon's Essay 
on Masques &c, in order to prove his author- 
ship of Shakspere's plays. In this Essay Bacon 
is either simular; or in earnest, for he deems 
an apology necessary for treating of matters 
of this kind in the midst of graver treatises, 
probably he may have thought them frivolous, 
as he accounts them but toys to come among 
such serious observations, although his taste 
seems to have lain in a display of wealth and 
magnificence, which he could ill afford. There 
is no doubt that he was fond of " triumphs, and 
quaint masques, fantastic pageantry dimming 
the sober eye of truth, and dazzling the sage 
himself." 



3 8 BACON versus SHAKSPERE. 

He probably had a taste for the fine arts, 
and for pictures, which he so beautifully de- 
scribes in one of his comedies, " Taming of the 
Shrew," such as 

" Adonis, painted by a running brook, 
And Cytherea all in sedges hid, 
Which seem to move and wanton with her breath, 
Even as the waving sedges play with wind. 
Or Daphne, roaming through a thorny wood 
Scratching her legs that one shall swear she bleeds." 

and for 

" Hangings all of Tyrian tapestry, 
Costly apparel, tentes and canopies, 
Fine linen, Turkey cushions boss'd with pearl, 
Valance of Venice gold in needle work." 

Socrates, the ancient philosopher, thought 
it did not become a philosopher to value the 
possession of magnificent garments, and sandals, 
and other ornaments of the body, except as far 
as necessity compels him to use them ; but the 
modern philosopher, " when the Mastership of 
the Wards had become vacant by the death of 
Sir George Carey, Nov. 13th, 161 2, expecting 
the place, had put most of his men into new 
cloaks : afterwards, when Sir Walter Cope 



BACON versus SHAKSPERE. 39 

carried the place, one said merrily that " Sir 
Walter was Master of the Wards, and Sir 
Francis Bacon of the Liveries." Again, when 
Bacon was appointed Lord Keeper, he " goes 
with great state, having a world of followers put 
upon him, though he had more than enough 
before, he rode in great pomp to Westminster 
with a train of two hundred gallants, and de- 
livered his inaugural speech in Chancery." 
Carleton gives us a glimpse of this great philos- 
opher in regard to his love for show : writing 
to Chamberlain, he says: — "on the nth of 
May, 1606, Sir Francis Bacon was married to 
his young wench (Alice Barnham) in Maribone 
Chapel. He was clad from top to toe in 
purple, and hath made himself and his wife 
such store of fine raiment of cloth of silver 
and gold that it draws deep into her portion.'' 
Nevertheless, the Philosopher (or Shakspere), 
wrote in Taming of the Shrew, Act IV. 3. : — 

" Tis the mind that makes the body rich ; 
And as the sun breaks through the darkest clouds, 
So Honour peereth in the meanest habit. 



4 o BACON versus SHAKSPERE. 

What is the Jay more beautiful than the Lark, 
Because his feathers are more beautiful ? 
Or is the Adder better than the Eel, 
Because his painted skin contents the eye ? " 

and in Hamlet, Act I., 3 : — 

" Costly thy habit as thy purse can buy 
But not expressed in fancy ; rich not gaudy 
For the apparel oft proclaims the man." 

What follows the philosopher's extravagan- 
cies ? — arrest for debt, borrowing largely from 
his particular friends, in order to ape such men 
as Raleigh, Leicester, Derby, and Burghleigh ; 
while the true philosopher, whom we believe to 
be the author of Hamlet, makes a competency 
and retires to Stratford-on-Avon, having — like 
the good old faithful Adam, which he used 
to enact in his own beautiful comedy of " As 
you Like It" — saved "a store to be a foster 
nurse, when his old limbs should lie lame ;" and 
to comfort his aged father, and his mother 
who had probably read to him in his younger 
days out of the " Big Bible," in the History of 
Joseph, how he provided for Jacob when there 
was a famine in the land. 



BACON versus SHAKSPERE. 41 

In 1587-8 the gentlemen of " Gray's Inn" of 
which Bacon, at that time, was Reader, presen- 
ted before Queen Elizabeth at Greenwich, the 
tragedy of " The Misfortunes of Arthur" of 
the body of which Thomas Hughes was the 
author, Nicholas Trotte writing the Induction, 
William Fulbecke and Francis Flower writing 
the choruses, while my Lord Verulam, then 
Francis Bacon, M. P. was only thought fit to 
assist in the preparation of the dumb-shows. 

As this is a matter of import in my argu- 
ment that Bacon was not the author of Shaks- 
pere's plays — external evidence being the test 
that I chiefly rely on — the following quotation 
is given from Collier's " History of English 
Dramatic Poetry to the time of Shakspere and 
Annals of the Stage to the Reformation."* 

" The gentlemen of " Grays Inn" acted at 
" Greenwich a tragedy, which ought not to be 
" passed over without particular notice. The 
" main body of the piece was written by a 



Vol. iii. p. 39. 



42 BACON versus SHAKSPERE. 

" Student of " Gray's Inn," named Thomas 
" Hughes * and it is called " The Misfortunes of 
" Arthur :" it is on all accounts a remarkable 
" production ; and so well did Lord Bacon think 
" of it, that he condescended to assist in the 
" invention and preparation of the dumb shows 
" by which the performance was varied and 
" illustrated. His coadjutors in this duty were 
" Christopher Yelverton, who more than twenty 
" years before had furnished an epilogue to 
" Gascoyne's " Jocasta," and a person named 
" John Lancaster. An introduction was con- 
" tributed by Nicholas Trotte, also of Grays Inn, 
" and William Fulbecke and Francis Flower 
" prepared additional speeches and choruses." 

About the time of the Tragedy of the " Mis- 
fortunes of Arthur," Bacon, who was then 



* Collier says, " Hughes was a man of considerable 
talent : his language is often vigorous, his thoughts 
striking and natural, and his blank verse more rich, 
varied and harmonious than that of any dramatic 
writer who preceded him as an author of plays not 
designed for popular exhibition." 



BACON versus SHAKSPERE. 43 

Reader of " Gray's Inn," wrote to Lord Burgh- 
leigh on the subject of a Masque which was to 
have been undertaken by the " Four Inns of 
Court." 

" Yt may please your good Lordshippe I 
" am sory the joynt maske from the Four Innes 
" of Court faileth : whearin I conceyve thear is 
" no other ground of the event, but impos- 
" sibility. Neverthelesse, bycause it faileth owt, 
" that at this tyme Graies Inne is well furnyshed 
" of galant yowng gentlemen, your Lordshippe 
" may be pleased to know, that rather than 
" this occasion shall passe withowt some de- 
"monstration of affection from the Innes of 
" Court, thear are a dozen gentlemen of Graies 
" Inne, that owt of the honor which they bear to 
" your Lordshippe and my Lord Chamberlayne, 
" to whome at theyr last maske they were so 
" much bownden, will be ready to furnish a 
" maske, wyshing it were in theyr power to per- 
" forme it according to theyr mynds. And so 
"for the present I humbly take my leave, 
" resting &c. &c. FRA. BACON. 



44 BACON versus SHAKSPERE. 

Collier does not give either the name of the 
masque, or the author, but it may be presumed 
that it was not Bacon, for on the 19th of March, 
1603, there was a " Panegyre" on the happy 
entrance of King James, our Soveraigne, to his 
first High Session of Parliament, which was 
written by Ben Jonson ; and there was also 
another masque written by him, which formed 
part of the " King's entertainmente of the 
Queene and Prince, their Highnesse at Al- 
thorpe at the Rt. Honourable the Lord Spen- 
cers, on Saturday, the 26th of June, 1603, as 
they came first into the Kingdom." 

At another masque, with nuptial songs, also 
written by Ben Jonson, and exhibited at the 
Lord Viscount Haddington's marriage at Court, 
1608, my Lords Pembroke and Montgomery 
were actors therein, and the devices and tro- 
phces were prepared by the celebrated archi- 
tect Inigo Jones. 

Is it possible that Bacon wrote this pane- 
gyre and these masques, and bribed Ben Jonson 
to appear as the author of them ? 



BACON versus SHAKSPERE. 45 

Between 1603 and 1608, and during those 
years, Bacon was engaged upon his principal 
philosophical and other important writings on 
matters of Church and State, among which was 
the " Advancement of Learnino;" — Man delisrht- 
ed him not, no nor woman either, that he 
should trouble himself about writing masques 
and panegyres, sonnets, and comedies ; if ever 
he did ? 

Now, considering how highly James and his 
Court relished the Dramas of Shakspere, as 
may be judged from the following entries in 
the accounts of the Revels : — 

" Hallamas day being the first of November 
1604, a play in the Banketinge House att 
Whithall called the Moor of Venis." 

" The Sunday following a play of the Merry 
Wives of Winsor." 

"On St. Stiven's Night, 1604, in the Hall 
a play called Mesur for Mesur." 

"On Inosents Night, 1604, the plaie of 
Errors," 
and further, considering also that Bacon had 



46 BACON versus SHAKSPERE. 

received from King James the offices of King's 
Counsel, and Solicitor General, and had been 
Knighted, three happy prologues to the great 
hereafter, when he should become the Lord 
keeper, and Lord Chancellor, with a Peerage ; 
it is strange that he takes no part in the Court 
Masques between 1603 and 1608 ! 

Where was this " Fancy's child ?" Where 
were his "warbling sonnets, like native wood 
notes wild" ? Where 

" his cunning brain 

Improved by favour of nine-fold train ? " 

Where was this modern Horace with his Cor- 
onation ode ? 

When James came to the throne, Bacon 
was in his 44th year, by that time, his poetic 
genius, his strong imagination, his profundity of 
thought, his eloquent language, his immense 
power of mind and utterance, his richness of 
imagery, his energy of diction, his inimitable 
conception had been developed. Bacon the 
Poet, with his 

" eye in a fine frenzy rolling, 

Glancing from heaven to earth, from earth to heaven ; 



BACON versus SHAKSPERE. 47 

With an imagination bodying forth 
The form of things unknown," 

not writing a sonnet, nor heroical verses, nor 
an ode upon the accession of a King in whom, 
to use his own words, he saw " hopes of at least 
realizing his magnificent dreams of the regener- 
ation of learning and the extension of the King- 
dom of man." There is something in this more 
than natural, if Philosophy could but find it 
out, if he was, indeed, the author of the " Mid- 
summer Night's Dream" and " The Tempest." 
Again, how chances it that he did not write 
the masque, or prepare some dramatic enter- 
tainment for the marriage of the young Earl of 
Essex on Twelfth Night, 1605? Why this in- 
difference to the son of his old and very tried 
friend Robert Devereux, the unfortunate, self- 
willed, rash, impetuous Essex, who oftentimes 
urged Bacon's claims upon Queen Elizabeth ? 
Even this was entrusted to Ben Jonson ; and 
yet another, a sort of pageant, exhibited at 
Theobalds before the Kings of England and 
Denmark on the 24th of July, 1606 — We hear 



4 8 BACON versus SHAKSPERE. 

nothing more of Bacon either as stage manager, 
or property man, until the masque, written by 
Francis Beaumont and given in honour of the 
marriage of the Princess on the 20th of Febru- 
ary, 16 1 2-1 3, by the gentlemen of Gray's Inn and 
the Inner Temple, when he, according to Wm. 
Aldis Wright, but Collier does not say so, was 
the contriver of the Device, which represented 
the marriage of the Thames and the Rhine. 

At Shrovetide, the day of the wedding, Sun- 
day the 14th, there was a masque at the ex- 
pense of the Court, written by Dr. Campion. 
Another was given by the gentlemen of the 
Middle Temple and Lincoln's Inn on the 15th, 
upon which occasion George Chapman's mem- 
orable masque was selected. 

In the next year (Dec. 9th, 161 3) Bacon hav- 
ing been made Attorney General in the pre- 
ceding October, prepared at his own cost and 
charges a masque for the delectation of King 
James. The expenses attending it amounted 
to 2,000 pounds sterling (equal to about 40,000 
dollars) an enormous and extravagant amount 



BACON versus SHAKSPERE. 49 

for the dumb-show. Bacon declined to accept 
a contribution towards it of 500 pounds from 
Gray's Inn, and Mr. Yelverton. This lavish 
expenditure has in it a kind of obsequiousness^ a 
sort of pandering to the weakness and vanity of 
the King. 

The year after, on Twelfth night, the gentle- 
men of Gray's Inn, under the patronage of Sir 
Francis Bacon, and upon the occasion of the 
marriage of the Duke of Somerset, exhibited a 
" Masque of Flowers" which was printed and 
dedicated by the authors to the Very Honour- 
able Sir Francis Bacon, His Majesty's Attor- 
ney General. 

The Attorney General does not figure as 
an author in any of the masques of this period, 
although Spedding believes that fragments of 
a masque, in a bundle of the Lambeth MSS. in 
which were found the speeches for the Essex 
Masque, bear the impress of Bacon's mind, al- 
though they are without date, title, heading, 
but simply are in the hand writing of that age. 
Here again is all conjecture ! But a Latin quo- 



5 o BACON versus SHAKSPERE. 

tation appears in the fragment, and the " Essex 
Masque," that which the poet saith was never 
granted "Amare et Sapere;" which also is quoted 
in Bacon's Essay of Love : — " A mare et Sapere 
vix Deo conceditur" and because the ancient 
adage is introduced into the " Troilus and 
Cressida," Act III. 2, in these lines : — 
" But you are wise, 
Or else you love not ; for to be wise and love 
Exceed man's might ; that dwells with gods above," 

Ergo — Bacon is the author of " Troilus and 
Cressida" — prodigious! — It has not yet been 
shown that he was the author of a Masque, 
much less a Tragedy ! 

Nathaniel Holmes says it is historically 
known that Bacon wrote sonnets to Elizabeth, 
and Masques and Devices to be enacted before 
her, and that both she and James knew that he 
was the author of many plays enacted before 
them, and that he took a leading part in the 
actual composition of the magnificent dramatic 
entertainments got up for the Royal amuse- 
ment ; but Nathaniel Holmes gives no author- 



BACON versus SHAKSPERE. 



ity for the statement. It is strange that Col- 
lier, in his exhaustive volumes, The Annals of 
the Stage, the completest epitome of the kind, 
has not the slightest reference to Bacon, in any 
masque or play, or interlude, save " the Misfor- 
tunes of Arthur " in which he assisted to get up 
the " inexplicable dumb-shows ! " neither does 
Nathaniel Holmes give the name of one of 
Bacon's masques written by himself, nor the 
time nor place of their exhibitions, nor who 
were the spectators ; yet, he would have the 
world to believe that there were private reasons 
why Bacon's authorship should not be divulged, 
but he does not give Bacon's reasons, nor any 
others satisfactory to my mind. I am yet at a 
loss to conceive the reason why Bacon should 
withhold his authorship, if Elizabeth and 
James and their courtiers knew him to be a 
writer of sonnets, masques, plays, &c. Again, 
he knowing the delight the Queen and King 
took in these matters, I should have thought his 
obsequiousness, if not his desire for posthu- 
mous fame, which some more hunt for than the 



5 2 BACON versus SHAKSPERE. 

grace of God, would have made him reveal his 

authorship, in order to have said of him 

" Be sure (our Bacon) thou cans't never die 
But, crown'd with laurel live eternally ;" 

and to have taken to himself the encomiums of 

Francis Meres that his productions ranked with 

those of Seneca and Plautus. 

Bacon's own words, in his apology in the 
matter of the estrangement of Essex, are : — 
" I ever set this down, that the only course 
to be held with the Queen, was by obseqtii- 
ousness, and observance? In the first book of 
the Advancement of Learning, he says : — " in 
regard of the love and reverence towards 
learning, which the example and countenance 
of two so learned princes, Queen Elizabeth 
and your Majesty, being as Castor and Pol- 
lux, lucida sidera, stars of excellent light and 
most benign influence, hath wrought in all 
men of place and authority." 

Let any one read the dedication of Bacon 
to King James of his Advancement of Learn- 
ing, and he must be struck with it's sycophan- 



BA CON versus SHA KSPERE. 5 3 

tish and fulsome adulation — a few lines will 
do : — " I have been touched, yea, and possessed 
with an extreme wonder at those your virtues 
and faculties, which the Philosophers call 
intellectual ; the largeness of your capacity, 
the faithfulness of your memory, the swiftness 
of your apprehension, the penetration of your 
judgment, and the facility and order of your 
elocution. ****** I am well assured 
that this which I shall say is no amplification 
at all, but a positive and measured truth ; 
which is, that there hath not been since Christ's 
time any King or temporal monarch, which 
hath been so learned in all literature and 
erudition, divine and human." Such a dedi- 
cation as this may account, to a certain extent, 
for Charles Kingsley's sweeping assertion 
against James: — " If to have found England 
one of the greatest countries in Europe, and 
to have left it one of the most inconsiderable 
and despicable ; if to be fooled by flatterers 
to the top of his bent, until he fancied him- 
self all but a god, while he was not even a 



54 BACON versus SHAKSPERE. 

man, and could neither speak the truth, keep 
himself sober, nor look on a drawn sword 
without shrinking." 

Macaulay says of him : — 

" His cowardice, his childishness, his ped- 
antry, his ungainly person and manner, his 
provincial accent, made him an object of de- 
rision? 

David Hume says of him : — 

" His learning bordered on pedantry, his 
pacific disposition on pusillanimity, his wisdom 
on cunning, his friendship on light fancy and 
boyish fondness." 

This will be sufficient to establish Bacon's 
obsequiousness, without using his own words 
in his apology : — 

" I ever set this down, that the only course 
to be held with the Queen was by obsequious- 
ness and observance? 

Mark the contrast between the play actor 
and young poet's manly dedications * of the 



See any good edition of the Poems and of Bacon. 



BACON versus SHAKSPERE. 55 

" Venus & Adonis " and " Lucrece " to the 
Earl of Southampton, and Bacon's dedica- 
tion of the " Advancement of Learning " to 
King James ; it is as apparent as the differ- 
ence between the absolute poetry of Bacon, 
and the poetry of Shakspere, which will pres- 
ently be shown. 

Bacon's desire for posthumous fame is best 
expressed in his own words : — 

" I account the use that a man should seek 
of the publishing of his own writings before 
his death to be but an untimely anticipation 
of that which is proper to follow a man, and 
not to go along with him." 

In a letter to Mr. Toby Matthew in 1623, 
(the year of Heminge & Condell's Folio edit- 
tion of Shakspere), he writes : — 

" It is true my labours are now most set to 
have those works which I have formerly pub- 
lished, as that of " Advancement of Learning," 
that of Henry VII., that of the Essays, being 
retractate and made more perfect, well trans- 
lated into Latin by the help of some good 



5 6 BACON versus SHAKSPERE. 

pens which forsake me not. For these mod- 
ern languages will, at one time or other, play 
the bankrupt with books ; and since I have 
lost much time with this age, / would be glad 
to recover it with posterity. 

In his dedication of the 1625 edition he 
says : — " I do now publish my Essays, which of 
all my other works have been most current. 
For that as it seems, they come to men's 
business and bosoms. I have enlarged them 
both in number and weight; so that indeed 
they are a new work. I thought it therefore 
agreeable to my affection and obligation to your 
Grace, to prefix your name before them, both 
in English and Latin. For I do conceive that 
the Latin volume of them {being in the universal 
language)* may last as long as books last." 



* The desire for fame is so strong, that he must 
have his writings put in a language known to all 
scholars, irrespective of their nationality. 

Would the writing of Shakspere's plays have been 
time lost with this age ? Would they be considered 
as " but toys to come " amongst his essays ? 



BACON versus SHAKSPERE. 57 

Would that the author of the plays called 
Shakspere's, and which, despite the " Theo- 
rists," will, unless they can get better evidence 
to the contrary, ever be considered his, had 
during his lifetime made a collection of his 
works and rescued those that were published 
in 1623, from the depravations that obscure 
them ; thereby securing for them a better des- 
tiny by giving them to the world in their 
genuine state. Would he had been as jealous 
of his literary reputation as the author of the 
" Essays " there would have been an end, or 
rather no beginning of the jargon that has 
been written about them; for as Samuel Tay- 
lor Coleridge felicitously remarks : — " If all that 
has been written upon Shakspere by English- 
men " (and now latterly by some Americans)* 
"were burned in the want of candles, merely to 
enable us to read one-half of what our Dram- 
atist produced, we should be gainers. Provi- 
dence has given England the greatest man that 



The parenthesis is mine. 



58 BACON versus SHAKSPERE. 

ever put on and off Mortality, and has thrown 
a sop to the envy of other nations, by inflicting 
upon his native country the most incompetent 
critics." 

True, Coleridge, — True, — but alas ! Shaks- 
pere had no desire for fame — " that glorious 
immortality of true greatness 

" That lives and spreads aloft by those pure eyes, 
And perfect witness of all judging Jove." 

I cannot see why Bacon, if he was a poet 
could have objected to be found in company 
with Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey, and Sir 
Thomas Wyatt, who have been reputed " the 
two chief lanterns of light to all others that 
have since employed their pens upon English 
poesie ; " or with Edward Vere, Earl of Oxford ; 
or Fulke Greville, Lord Brook ; or Sir Walter 
Raleigh ; or Sir Philip Sidney ; or Sir Henry 
Wotton ; or Sir John Harrington ; and other no- 
ble and titled poets of the reign of Queen 
Elizabeth, though he may have objected to be 
found in the company of the rank and file 



BACON versus SHAKSPERE. 59 

composed of Chapman, Shakspere, Jonson, 
Beaumont, Fletcher, Massinger and Marlowe* 

The reason for concealment most obvious 
to my mind is that Bacon was not a Poet. 
If he were, how is it that he, being notoriously 
given to write sonnets to his "mistress Eliza- 
beth's eye-brow," should have left no record of 
them. If he had written sonnets to the Virgin 
Queen, where are they? 

Nathaniel Holmes says : — " It was probably 
not an uncommon thing for manuscript sonnets 
to be circulating among great persons at this 
time. Indeed, we positively know that Bacons 
sonnets did pass from hand to hand in that 
manner? If so, as the statement is very 
authoritative, how chances it that none were 
saved ? Sir Philip Sidney and Sir Walter 



* Was it done out of deference to his bitterest 
enemy Lord Coke ? whose deliberate opinion was that 
play-writers, and stage-players were as fit subjects for 
the grand jury as vagrants, and " that the fatal end of 
these five is beggary — the Alchemist, the Informer, 
the Concealer, the Monopotext, and the Poetaster." 



60 BACON versus SHAKSPERE. 

Raleigh wrote sonnets — some of these have 
been saved. 

In Ellis's volumes of the Early English 
Poets, to which is prefixed an historical sketch 
of the Rise and Progress of the English 
Language, there is not a vestige of the Poetry 
of Francis Bacon — not a single couplet or 
line, although Ellis gives specimens of upwards 
of fifty writers of poetry who flourished in the 
reigns of Elizabeth and James, among them, 
strange to say, Wm. Herbert, Earl of Pem- 
broke, one of the "singular good Lordes" to 
whom the 1623 Folio was dedicated, and also 
Robert Devereux, Earl of Essex, for whom 
Bacon claims to have written sonnets and 
addressed them in the Earl's name to Queen 
Elizabeth. Where are these sonnets written by 
Bacon for Essex ? 

The omission of Bacon's name in the vol- 
umes of Ellis cannot arise from oversight on 
the part of that careful compiler. Was it from 
Ellis's ignorance of Bacon's poetry ? or, was 
it from his want of sagacity and perception 



BA CON versus SHA KSPERE. 6 1 

in not discovering Bacon's wonderful poetic 
genius? 

Again, it is strange that Warton, in his val- 
uable and interesting History of English Poetry 
from the nth to the 17th century, is equally 
reticent ; Francis Bacon is not even mentioned 
by name. More puzzling, many of Bacon's writ- 
ings have been saved and published, but not, 
as far as I can learn, one line of his blank verse. 
No " sugared sonnets," nor " honied poems," 
have ever been discovered in Bacon's hand wri- 
ting, though his correspondence was immense. 
His published letters make up two octavo 
volumes. He corresponded largely with emi- 
nent scholars on questions of erudition and 
philosophy, as well as with personal friends in 
exchanging the greetings and courtesies of 
private life. His letters are very valuable 
both as illustrating the inner working of his 
own mind, and as affording important informa- 
tion concerning those great political and social 
questions on which he was consulted by all 
parties in the nation. He left a collection of 



62 BACON versus SHAKSPERE. 

apothegms, containing facetious anecdotes, some 
piquant and sprightly in the highest degree. 
Therefore, it is strange that there has not been 
found any poetry like that of Shakspere's, inter- 
spersed with his correspondence. Could he 
not say of some friend, when writing to an- 
other friend : — 

" He hath a tear for pity, and a hand 
Open as day for melting charity." 



or, 



or, 



or, 



or, 



or, 



" O, what a deal of scorn looks beautiful 
In the contempt and anger of his lip ! " 



" His life was gentle ; and the elements 

So mix'd in him, that Nature might stand up 

And say to all the world ' This was a man ! ' ' 



" Patience and sorrow strove, 
Who should express her goodliest." 

" Age cannot wither her, nor custom stale 
Her infinite variety." 

" He wears the rose 
Of youth upon him." 



or, 



or, 



or, 



or, 



or, 



BACON versus SHAKSPERE. 63 



" Her voice was ever soft, 
Gentle, and low — an excellent thing in woman." 



" A man that Fortune's buffets and rewards 
Hast ta'en with equal thanks." 



" A merrier man, 
Within the limit of becoming mirth, 
I never spent an hour's talk withal." 



" He draweth out the thread of his verbosity 
Finer than the staple of his argument." 



" In his brain, 
Which is as dry as the remainder biscuit 
After a voyage, he hath strange places cramm'd 
With observation, the which he vents 
In mangled forms." 

Poets were not mean creatures ; the Apos- 
tle Paul quotes them, in these memorable lines, 
" For in Him (GOD) we live, move and have 
our being, as certain of your poets have said." 

Bacon could not have objected to being 



64 BACON versus SHAKSPERE. 

considered a poet, judging from his own opin- 
ions upon the value of Poetry ! 

* " Because the acts and events of true 
" history have not that magnitude which satis- 
" fieth the mind of man, poesy feigneth acts and 
" events greater and more heroical. Because 
" true history propoundeth the successes and 
" issues of actions not so agreeable to the 
" merits of virtue and vice, therefore poesy 
" feigns them more just in retribution and more 
" according to revealed providence. Because 
"true history representeth actions and events 
" more ordinary and less interchanged, therefore 
" poesy endueth them with more rareness and 
" alternative variations. So as it appeareth that 
"poesy serveth and conferreth to magnanimity, 
" morality, and to delectation. And therefore it 
" was ever thought to have some participation 
" of divineness, because it doth raise and erect 
" the mind, by submitting the shows of things 
" to the desires of the mind ; whereas reason 



* Advancement of Learning, B. ii. 



BACON versus SHAKSPERE. 65 

" doth buckle and bow the mind unto the na- 
" ture of things." * 



* To what in Poetry belongeth this "participation of 
divineness ? " — Is it not its Creative power, such as is 
found in Homer, Dante, Shakspere, and Milton? 

But not to one in this benighted age 

Is that diviner inspiration giv'n 
That burns in Shakspere's or in Milton's page 

The pomp and prodigality of Heav'n. 

Gray. 

John Sterling must have thought that the plays of 
Shakspere had a touch of this " diviner inspiration " 
when he says, that " if in the wreck of Britain, and all 
she has produced, one creation of her spirit could be 
saved by an interposing Genius, to be the endowment 
of a new world, it would be the volume that contains 
them." 

Carlyle says " there are passages in Shakspere that 
come unto you like splendour out of Heaven ; bursts 
of radiance, illuminating the very heart of the thing." 

The " diviner inspiration " is not manifested in 
Bacon's paraphrastic version of the seven Psalms 
dedicated to " his very good friend," Mr. George Her- 
bert. 



66 BACON versus SHAKSPERE. 

The desertion of Bacon's defence to the 
charge of bribery and corruption against him 
while holding the office of Lord Chancellor, and 
his avoidance of trial are mysteries not yet 
solved ; and the reasons for his not wishing to 
be thought a Poet, such as Shakspere, are also 
mysterious and incapable of solution; that is 
upon the assumption that he was a Poet, and 
expressed the wish not to be so considered. 

Let us now test his qualifications, or give a 
" taste of his quality" as a Poet. Nathaniel 
Holmes says : — " Bacon's versions of the Psalms 
were the amusement of his idle hours, and that 
certainly nothing very great or brilliant should 
be looked for in these mere translations into 
verse. In idea and sentiment he was abso- 
lutely limited to the original Psalm ; nor could 
he have much latitude of expression ; besides 
large allowance must be made for the necessary 
difference between the young and strong im- 
agination of 

' The Lunatic, The Lover and The Poet' 
of the Midsummer Night's Dream, of the man 



BACON versus SHAKSPERE. 67 

of thirty-three, and the more compounded age 
and the lassitude of the sick old man of sixty- 
five." Nevertheless, Nathaniel Holmes, who 
wishes to be consistent in his " theory," says a 
few pages preceding : — " Towards the close of 
Bacon's life, he is now working in good earnest 
for the next ages, first revising, finishing and 
republishing his former works, and then devot- 
ing the remainder of life to his greater philo 

sophical labours." Not bad work for his 

11 more compounded age." 

Let us turn to the CIVth Psalm, full of 
majesty addressed to JEHOVAH as Creator 
of the World, a psalm of which Humboldt 
said : — " it presents a picture of the entire 
Cosmos, and we are astonished to see within 
the compass of a Poem of such small dimen- 
sions, the Universe, the Heavens, and the 
Earth drawn with a few grand strokes." 
Take for instance Verses 3, 4 and 5 : — 
"Who layeth the beams of his chambers in 
the waters : Who maketh the clouds his 
chariot : Who walketh upon the wings of the 



68 BACON versus SHAKSPERE. 

wind : Who maketh his angels spirits ; and 
his ministers a flaming fire. Who laid the foun- 
dations of the earth, that it should not be 
removed for ever. " 

Poor Bacon limited to such expressions as 
these ! * 

Let us see what Shakspere has produced in 
the way of analogy or similitude ; open your 
Romeo and Juliet at Act II., Sc. i., and you will 
find this glorious passage : — 

" Thou art 



As glorious to this night, being o'er my head, 
As is a winged messenger of Heaven 



* His translation or paraphrastic version is limited in 

expression : — 
"Vaulted and arched are his chamber beams 
Upon the seas, the waters and the streams ; 
The clouds as chariots swift to scour the sky ; 
The stormy winds upon their wings do fly. 
His Angels spirits are, that wait his will 
As flames of fire his anger they fulfil. 
In the beginning, with a mighty hand 
He made the Earth by counterpoise to stand, 
Never to move, but to be fixed still ; 
Yet hath no pillars but his sacred will." 



BACON versus SHAKSPERE. 69 

Unto the white-upturned wondering eyes 
Of mortals, that fall back to gaze on him 
When he bestrides the lazy-pacing clouds 
And sails upon the bosom of the air." 

In the 25th and 26th verses of the same 
Psalm, the Psalmist casts glances upon the ships, 
the Ocean, and " the Leviathan made to play 
therein," and Bacon gives us this line, the only- 
one Nathaniel Holmes quotes : — 

"The greater navies look like walking woods." 

How a true Poet, not a verse maker, 'could 
venture to put into rhyme such a sublime 
Psalm as the CIVth, and other magnificent 
lyrical raptures with which the Book of Psalms 
continually teems, I am at a loss to conceive ; 
he may as well attempt to put the gorgeous 
natural descriptions of Job, or the prophecies of 
that " mighty orb of song," the Divine Isaiah, 
into rhyme. It has been wisely said : — " Every 
attempt to clothe the sacred scripture in verse, 
(rhyme) ? will have the effect of misrepresent- 
ing and debasing the original." 

My Lord Bacon has most certainly grossly 



7 o BA CON versus SUA KSPERE. 

misrepresented the dignity of the original, judg- 
ing from his versification of the XCth Psalm 
— made by the Church of England a part of 
"The Order for the Burial of the Dead," doubt- 
less from its containing such a most affecting 
description of man's mortal and transitory state. 
Our English translation of the verses par- 
aphrased by Bacon is as follows : — 

" LORD, thou hast been our dwelling place in 
" all generations. Before the mountains were 
" brought forth, or ever thou hadst formed the 
" earth and the world, even from everlasting to 
" everlasting, Thou art GOD. Thou turnest man 
" to destruction ; and sayest, Return, ye children 
" of men. For a thousand years in Thy sight are 
" but as yesterday when it is past, and, as a watch 
" in the night. Thou earnest them away as with 
" a flood ; they are as a sleep : in the morning 
" they are like grass which groweth up. In the 
" morning it flourisheth, and groweth up ; in the 
" evening it is cut down and withereth. For all 
" our days are passed away in thy wrath : We 
" spend our years as a tale that is told." 



BA CON versus SHA KSPERE. 7 1 

Now for Bacon's metrical version : 

" Lord thou art our home, to whom we fly, 
And so hast always been from age to age : 
Before the hills did intercept the eye, 

Or that the frame was up of earthly stage, 

One God thou wert, and art, and still shalt be ; 
Both Death and Life obey Thy holy lore, 

And visit in their turns, as they are sent ; 
A thousand years with Thee they are no more 
Than yesterday, which, ere it is, is spent : 
Or as a watch by night, that course doth keep, 
And goes, and comes, unawares to them that sleep." 

This specimen is selected by Nathaniel 
Holmes for its elegance, its rhythmic flow, its 
pathetic sweetness, and its similitude to Shaks- 
pere in the expression and use of words, and he 
instances the following lines of Bacon's para- 
phrase 

" As a tale told, which sometime men attend, 
And sometimes not, our life steals to an end."* 

as a parallel to the following from Shakspere : — 
" Life is as tedious as a twice told tale 



* In the New England Primer we find such poetry, 
" Our days begin with trouble here, 
Our life is but a span, 
And cruel death is always near, 
So frail a thing is man." 



72 



BA CON versus SHAKSPERE. 



Vexing the dull ear of a drowsy man." 

King John Act iii. 4 
and 

" Life's but a walking shadow; a poor player, 
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage, 
And then is heard no more : it is a tale 
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury 
Signifying nothing." 

Macbeth Act V. 5 

The original version in our Prayer Book 

is as follows : — 

" For when Thou art angry, all our days are gone : we 
bring our years to an end, as it were a tale that is told." 

There is nothing great or brilliant about 
this translation of the XCth Psalm. How un- 
like is the reflection of the Psalmist's poetic fire 
upon Bacon, compared with the effect it pro- 
duced upon Milton, in the hymn which he 
ascribes to our first parents ; or upon Thomson, 
in the hymn with which he closes the " Sea- 
sons ;" or upon Coleridge, in the great Psalm 
which swelled from his harp, as he struck it to 
the music of the Arveiron, and in the light of 
the morning-star ; or upon St. John of Damas- 
cus, in the celebrated hymn sung after mid- 



BACON versus SHAKSPERE. 73 

night on Easter morning, during the symbolic 
ceremony of lighting the tapers ; one verse of 
which, I cannot refrain from quoting as a 
contrast to Bacon's XCth. 

Now let the heavens be joyful ; let earth her song begin ; 
Let the round world keep triumph, and all that is therein ; 
Invisible or visible, their notes let all things blend ; 
For Christ the Lord hath risen, our joy that hath no end ! 

Nathaniel Holmes can be ingenuous as well 
as ingenious. He alludes to Bacon's metrical 
version of the Psa/ms, giving the world to un- 
derstand that the Philosopher had compiled in 
metre the Book of Psalms, whereas he only 
wrote a paraphrastic version of seven of the 
Psalms of David. 

Here are four of Bacon's line's from his 
translation of the CIVth Psalm : — 

" Father and King of Pow'rs, both high and low, 
Whose sounding fame all creatures serve to blow ; 
My soul shall with the rest strike up Thy praise 
And carol of Thy works and wondrous ways ; " 

these refer to the first Verse, which is here given 
from the original : — 

" Bless the Lord, O my Soul. O Lord my God, 



74 BACON versus SHAKSPERE. 

thou art very great; Thou art clothed with 
honour and majesty." 

Bacon, here, with his "Line upon Line" is 
far behind his contemporaries, and he does not 
shine forth as brightly as in his prose, which is, 
at times, full of poetic beauty ; his rhyme in 
this instance has taken away all the Psalmist's 
ecstasy, much in the same way that Pope takes 
all the sublimity out of Homer. 

Is such poetry as this, " making up for the 
lost time with this age," which Bacon deplores, 
and which he "would be glad, as God shall 
give him leave, to recover it with posterity." ? — 
Could Bacon, with all his vanity and love of 
fame, write such an Epilogue after his poetry 
as Horace did after completing a considerable 
collection of lyrical pieces ? 

" Exegi monumentum cere perennis 
Regalique situ pyramidum altius ;?•' &c. 

thus translated by Lord Lytton : — 

" I have built a monument than bronze more lasting, 

Soaring more high than regal pyramids, 
Which nor the stealthy gnawing of the rain drop 



BACON versus SHAKSPERE. 



75 



Nor the vain rush of Boreas shall destroy ; 
Nor shall it pass away with the unnumbered 

Series of ages and the flight of time. 
I shall not wholly die." 

How different is the master-hand of Shaks- 

pere when he alludes to some Scriptural text, 

or rather, reproduces some leading truths of 

Scripture; he does not paraphrase after Bacon's 

fashion, neither does he metaphrase. Whether 

the religious sentiments scattered throughout 

his plays are his own personal sentiments, or 

merely such as he, in his dramatic art would 

cause his personages to utter, is foreign to my 

present inquiry. Suffice it to say his parallels 

with the Scriptures are not mere Truisms, Pla- 

tonisms, Euphonisms. — There is little of the 

letter in them, but there is great abundance of 

the spirit ; a few instances will be enough : * 



* The allusions to Scripture in the Essays of Bacon 
are many ; they were necessary in some instances to 
support and confirm his own profound conclusions, 
but in the works of Bacon the expressions of religious 
sentiment do not seem to belong so much to the au- 
thor as they do, in Shakspere, who sometimes " delays 



76 BACON versus SHAKSPERE. 

My lovers and my friends stand aloof from my sore ; 
and my kinsmen stand afar off 

Psalm XXXVIII. 2. 
Those you make your friends, 



And give your hearts to, when they once perceive 



the action of the drama to give a more full and em- 
phatic expression to a religious idea." 

In connection with this, we may call attention to a 
circumstance mentioned in William Aldis Wright's 
Preface to The Advancement of Learning : — 

" In February, 1 591-2 (Bacon then being 31 years 
of age) his brother Anthony came to live in Gray's 
Inn, and from the motherly solicitude of Lady Bacon 
for her eldest son's religious welfare, we learn that 
Francis was negligent in the use of family prayers, 
and was not to be held up as a pattern to his brother, 
or resorted to for counsel in such matters!' 

Shakspere, in his 32nd year, had written The 
Merchant of Venice, of which Schlegel, in his Lectures 
on Dramatic Literature, says "it is one of Shakspere's 
most perfect works." In it is that beautiful apostro- 
phe of Portia's on the quality of Mercy, unparallel- 
led by any author ancient or modern. 

Bacon's Essays, written when the author was 45 
years old, treat of Great Place, of Boldness, of Good- 
ness, and Goodness of Nature, of Nobility, of Athe- 
ism, of Superstition, of Travel, of Empire, of Coun- 
sel, &c, but not of Mercy. 



BA CO A r versus SHAKSPERE. 



77 



The least rub in your fortunes, fall away 
Like water from ye, never found again 
But where they mean to sink ye. 

Henry VIII. Act ii. Sc. i. 
If thou, Lord shouldst mark iniquities, O Lord who 
shall stand ? Psalm CXXX. 3 

Use every man according to his desert, and who shall 
'scape a whipping ? Hamlet Act II. 2 

My flesh and my heart faileth : but God is the strength 
of my heart, and my portion for ever. 

Psalm LXXIII. 26 
Now God be praised : that to believing souls 
Gives light to darkness, comfort in despair. 

2 King Henry VI. Act II. i 
They bless with their mouth, but they curse inwardly. 

Psalm LXII 4 
Some that smile, have in their hearts, I fear 
Millions of mischief. 

Julius Cassar Act IV. 1 

My tables — meet it is, I set it down 

That one may smile and smile, and be a villain. 

Hamlet Act I. 5 
Say not thou, I will recompense evil ; but wait on the 
Lord, and He shall save thee. 

Proverbs XX. 22 
God will be avenged for the deed ; 
Take not the quarrel from His powerful arm, 
He needs no indirect nor lawless course 
To cut off those who have offended Him. 

Richard III. Act I. 4 



7 8 BACON versus SHAKSPERE. 

Put we our quarrel to the will of Heaven, 
Who, when He sees the hours ripe on earth, 
Will rain hot vengeance on offenders' heads. 

Richard II. Act I. 2 
If I regard iniquity in my heart, the Lord will not hear 
me. Psalm LXVI. 18 

The Gods are deaf to hot and peevish vows : 
They are polluted springs, more abhorr'd 
Than spotted livers in the sacrifice. 

Troilus & Cressida Act V. 3 
Words without thoughts never to Heaven go. 

Hamlet Act III. 3 
Give to him that asketh thee, and from him that is 
rich turn not away. St. Matthew V. 42 

To build his fortune, I will strain a little 
For 'tis bond in men. 

Timon of Athens Act I. 1 
We are born to do benefits. 

Timon of Athens Act I. 2 
What is yours to bestow, is not yours to reserve. 

Twelfth Night Act I. 5 
He accepteth not the persons of Princes, nor regardeth 
the rich more than the poor, for they are all the work of 
his hands. Job XXXIV. 19 

The King is but a man as I am ; the violet smells to 
him as it doth to me ; the element shews to him as it doth 
to me ; all his senses have but human conditions ; his 
ceremonies laid by, in his nakedness he appears but a 
man. Henry V. Act IV. 1 



BACON versus SHAKSPERE. 79 

The self same sun that shines upon his court 
Hides not his visage from our cottage, but 
Looks on all alike. 

Winter's Tale Act IV. 3. 
Who provideth for the Raven his food ? 

Job XXXVIII. 41 
He that doth the ravens feed 
Yea, providently caters for the sparrow 
Be comfort to my age. 

As You Like It Act II. 3 
The night cometh when no man can work 

St. John XI. 4 
Let's take the instant by the forward top ; 
For we are old, and our quick'st decrees 
The inaudible and noiseless foot of time 
Steals ere we can effect them. 

Alls Well that Ends Well Act V. 5 
The old Serpent called the Devil and Satan, which de- 
ceiveth the whole world. Rev. XII. 9 

Devils soonest tempt resembling spirits of light. 

Loves Labor Lost Act IV. 1 
Often times to win us to our harm 
The instruments of darkness tell us truths and 
Win us to honest trifles, to betray us 
In deepest consequence. 

Macbeth Act I. 3 
When devils will their blackest sins put on, 
They to suggest at first with heavenly shows. 

Timon of Athens Act II. x 



80 BACON versus SHAKSPERE. 

How exquisitely Shakspere has wrought 
Job's " morning stars singing together" into 
the following unmatched lines, except in the in- 
spired writings of the old Testament, giving in 
them additional force and beauty to that an- 
cient mystery which taught that the heavenly 
bodies, in their revolutions, sing together in 
a concert so loud, various and sweet as to exceed 
all proportion to the human ear. Also, to the 
old idea, of some of the Philosophers, which 
supposed that besides the music of the spheres 
which no mortal ear ever heard, there was a 
harmony in the human soul. 

" Look how the floor of heaven 

Is thick inlaid with patines of bright gold ; 

There's not the smallest orb, which thou behold'st 

But in his motion like an angel sings 

Still quiring to the young-eyed cherubin : 

Such harmony is in immortal souls ; 

But, whilst this muddy vesture of decay 

Doth grossly close it in, we cannot hear it." 

Merchant of Venice Act. V. i. 

The poet who wrote this angelic rapture in 
the thirty fourth year of his age, could not, in 



BA CON versus SUA KSPERE. 8 1 

the " sixth age," have written such a meagre 

couplet as this : — 

" As a tale told, which sometimes men attend. 
And sometimes not, our life steals to an end." 

unless he was in his " second childishness". 

Any one conversant with the writings of 
Shakspere would hardly say such " dogrel rime', 
as Bacon's paraphrase of the Psalms bore the 
impress of his " mighty line." If by descending 
from things sacred to things profane, Bacon's 
couplet may be parallelled in " As You Like It" 
Act III. Scene. 2 

" From the east to western Ind, 

No jewel is like Rosalind, 

Her worth, being mounted on the wind, 

Through all the world bears Rosalind, 

All the pictures, fairest lin'd, 

Are but black to Rosalind. 

Let no face be kept in mind 

But the fair of Rosalind." 
of which, Touchstone says : — 

" I'll rhyme you so, eight years together, din- 
ners and suppers, and sleeping hours excepted : 
it is the right butter-woman's rank to market." 



82 BACON versus SHAKSPERE. 

Could Milton who speaks of 

" the celestial siren's harmony 

That sit upon the nine unfolded spheres, 
And sing to these that hold the vital shears 
And turn the adamantine spindle round 
On which the fate of gods and men is wound. 

write in his poetic infancy such a line as 

" The greater navies look like walking woods. 

Could Coleridge who tells of 
" that innumerable company 



Who in broad circle lovelier than the rainbow 
Girdle this round earth in a dizzy motion, 
With noise too vast and constant to be heard ; — 
Fitliest unheard ! " 

produce such lines as these in connection with 

the XCth psalm 

Or as a watch by night, that course doth keep, 
And goes, and comes, unawares to them that sleep. 

Wordsworth, who says : — 

" The Heavens, whose aspect makes our minds as still 

As they themselves appear to be, 

Innumerable voices fill 

With everlasting harmony ; 

The towering headlands, crowned with mist, 

Their feet among the billows, know 

That Ocean is a mighty harmonist ; 



BACON versus SHAKSPERE. 83 

Thy pinions, universal Air, 

Ever waving to and fro, 

Are delegates of harmony, and bear 

Strains that support the seasons in their round : " 

could he have produced in his declining years 
such lines as these in reference to the grass 
which in the morning flourisheth, and in the 
evening withereth ? — 

" At morning, fair it musters on the ground ; 

At ev'n, it is cut down, and laid along, 
And though it spared were, and favour found, 
The weather would perform the mower's wrong : 
Thus hast thou hang'd our life on brittle pins, 
To let us know it will not bear our sins." 

Emphatically, I ask : — could Bacon, judging 
from all his absolutely known poetry, which is 
only this paraphrastic version of seven of the 
Psalms of David, by any possibility, have written 
such a striking parallel to this text in Christ's 
sermon on the Mount, " Judge not that ye be 
not judged; for with what judgment ye judge 
ye shall be judged ; and with what measure ye 
mete, it shall be measured to you again ; " as we 
find in the following passage from " Measure 
for Measure ? " words that might arrest an un- 






84 BACON versus SHAKSPERE. 

kind speech on the very lips, sending it back 

" as deep as to the lungs : " — 

" How would you be, 
If HE which is the top of judgment, should 
But judge you as you are ? oh, think on that 
And Mercy then will breath within your lips, 
Like man new made." 

We do not find in Bacon's writings any 
parallel passages to this one on Mercy, — which 
Shakspere calls in another place "an attribute 
to God — 

Bacon has given us Essays on Simula- 
tion, Envy, Vainglory, Cunning, Revenge, and 
Anger, but not on Mercy and Charity * True, 
he has given us an Essay on Love, in which 
he has strongly urged the dethronement of the 
God of Love, but he has not said a word in it 
about that Love which is the fulfilling of the 
Law : he has left no Essays on " Faith, 



* In his " De Dignitate et Augmentis Scientarum" 
Bacon gives a few lines to Charity, the noblest Grace, 
and says : — " If a man's mind be truly inflamed with 
charity, it doth work him suddenly into greater per- 
fectionthan all the doctrine of morality can do." 



BACON versus SHAKSPERE. 85 

And Virtue, Patience, Temperance, and Love, 
By name to come call'd Charity — the soul 
Of all the rest." 

Open your " Merchant of Venice" at the 
first scene of the fourth act, and see how Portia 
shines forth, " all her divine self," see how her 
elevated sense of pure Religion makes her ap- 
peal to Shylock's mercy. What a matchless 
piece of eloquence it is, and what a practical 
sermon to those who are enjoined to " do justice 
and love mercy ;" it is a lesson which ought to 
last through all time. Here it is unabridged — 
not a line can be spared — not a line need be 
added. The sermons of your ablest Divines 
pale before its " effectual fire :" 

The quality of Mercy is not strain'd ; 

It droppeth as the gentle rain from heaven 

Upon the place beneath : it is twice bless'd ; 

It blesseth him that gives, and him that takes : 

'Tis mightiest in the mightiest : it becomes 

The throned monarch better than his crown : 

His sceptre shows the force of temporal power, 

The attribute to awe and majesty, 

Wherein doth sit the dread and fear of kings ; 

But Mercy is above this sceptred sway ; 

It is enthroned in the hearts of kings, 



86 BACON versus SHAKSPERE. 

It is an attribute to GOD Himself ; 
And earthly power doth then show likest God's 
When Mercy seasons Justice. Therefore, Jew, 
Though Justice be thy plea, consider this, — 
That in the course of Justice, none of us 
Should see salvation : we do pray for Mercy ; 
And that same prayer doth teach us all to render 
The deeds of Mercy.* 

Is there any thing in Bacon's prose or poetry 
like the above ? No ! 

As Nathaniel Holmes is so fond of par- 
allels, I may put to him this question : — Did 
Shakspere borrow his idea of Mercy being " an 
attribute to God " from his contemporary Cer- 
vantes ? who, like Shakspere, entered on an im- 
mortal eternity on the same day, April 23, 16 16. 

The following is one of those wise injunc- 
tions which Don Quixote delivers to Sancho 
Panza, when he was appointed Governor of the 
Island of Barataria. 

" For the delinquent that is under thy juris- 



" * He delighteth in Mercy." Micah VII. 8 
"To the Lord our God belong Mercies and for- 
givenesses, though we have rebelled against him." 

Daniel IX. 9 



BACOX versus SHAKSPERE. 87 

diction, consider that the miserable man is sub- 
ject to the temptations of our depraved nature, 
and as much as thou canst, without grievance 
to the contrary party, show thyself mild and 
gentle ; for although God's attrihites are eqtial, 
yet, to our sight His Mercy is more preciotis, 
more eminent than His Justice!' 

Shakspere in another place (Measure for 
Measure, Act II., sc. 2) thus alludes to Mercy : — 

No ceremony, that to great ones 'longs, 
Not the King's crown, nor the deputed sword, 
The Marshal's truncheon, nor the Judge's robe, 
Become them with one half so good a grace 
As Mercy does." 

Bacon has given us an Essay on Riches, of 
which he says : 

" I cannot call Riches better than the bag- 
gage of Virtue : the Roman word is better — 
impedimenta ; for as the baggage is to an army, 
so is riches to virtue — it cannot be spared nor 
left behind, but it hindereth the march ; yea, and 
the care of it sometimes loseth or disturbeth the 
Victory ; " but he has given us no parallel to 



88 BACON versus SHAKSPERE. 

these passages, from Shakspere, on the love of 
money and avarice, the concomitants of Riches, 

How quickly Nature falls into revolt 
When gold becomes her object. 

2. Henry IV. Act IV. 4. 
Avarice 
Grows with more pernicious root 
Than summer seeding lust. 

Macbeth Act IV. 3 
There is thy gold ; worse poison to men's souls ; 
Doing more murders in this loathsome world 
Than these poor compounds that thou may'st not sell ; 
I sell thee poison, thou sold me none. * 

Gold ! yellow, glittering, precious gold, f 

. . . . . will make black, white ; foul, fair ; 

Wrong, right ; base, noble ; old, young ; coward, valiant- 

Ha, you gods ! Why, this 
Will lug your priests and servants from your sides, X 
Pluck stout men's pillows from below their heads. || 



* Spoken to an apothecary. Romeo and Juliet. 

-j-Timon of Athens, Act IV. 3. 

% Aristophanes, in his Plutus makes the priests of 
Jupiter desert his service to live with Plutus. || This 
alludes to the ancient custom of drawing away the 
pillow from under the heads of men, in their last 
agonies, to hasten their death, and thus relieve their 
sufferings. 



BACON versus SHAKSPERE. 89 

This yellow slave 

Will knit and break religions, bless the accurs'd ; 

Make the hoar leprosy ador'd ; place theives, 

And give them title, knee, and approbation, 

With senators on the bench : this is it 

That makes the wapper'd * widow wed again ; 

She, whom the spital-house and ulcerous sores 

Would cast the gorge at, this embalms and spices 

To th' April day again." 

It is not probable that Bacon could have 

written such sentiments as these upon Gold, 

and called it in another place in the " Timon of 

Athens: " — " Thou sweet king killer, and dear 

divorce, twixt natural son and sire ! thou bright 

denier of Hymen's purest bed ! that speak'st with 

every tongue to every purpose ! " for, according 

to Archbishop Whately, the illustrious annota- 

tor of Bacon's Essays, " the philosopher appears 

but too plainly to have been worldly, ambitious, 

covetous, base, selfish, and unscrupulous. He 

reached the highest pinnacle, indeed, to which 



* Wappered may mean debilitated, worn or weak- 
ened. Beaumont and Fletcher have " unwappered " 
in the sense of unworn. Wappered is a word in use 
in Glostershire and Warwickshire. 



9° 



BACON versus SHAKSPERE. 



his ambition had aimed ; but he died impoverish- 
ed, degraded, despised, and broken hearted. His 
example, therefore, is far from being at all seduc- 
tive." * 

Bacon heeded not the saying of St. Paul in 
his first epistle to his beloved Timothy : " They 
that will be rich fall into temptation and a 
snare, and into many foolish and hurtful lusts, 
which drown men in destruction and perdition." 
He regarded not the saying of Seneca : — " For- 
tune's bounties are generally snares ; we think 
we take, but are taken ;" nor these lines from 
Martial :— 

" 'Tis rare, when riches cannot taint the mind, 
In Croesus' wealth a Numa's soul to find " 

nor these from Juvenal — 

" Whence shall these prodigies of vice be traced ? 



* Basil Montague says of Bacon ; — He was a lover 
of the pomp of the world, to an extent highly dan- 
gerous for one who had but little private fortune, in- 
sufficient official remuneration, and habits which dis- 
qualified him for exercising a strict superintendence 
over the expenses of his household, on the conduct of 
his dependents generally." 



BACON versus SHAKSPERE. 9 i 

From wealth, my friend. 

Since Poverty, our better genius, fled, 

Vice, like a deluge, o'er the state has spread." 

Shakspere, supposing Bacon did not write the 
Rape of Lucrece, has written therein : — 

" The profit of excess 
Is but to surfeit, and such griefs sustain, 
That they prove bankrupt in this poor-rich gain. 
The aim of all is but to nurse the life 
With honour, wealth, and ease, in waning age ; 
And in this aim there is such thwarting strife, 
Than one for all, or all for one, we gage, 
As life for honour in fell battle's rage, 
Honour for wealth ; and oft that wealth doth cost 
The death of all, and altogether lost." 

Suppose, halting by the way, we examine 
these epithets applied by Archbishop Whately 
to Bacon, and see how Shakspere treats them. 

Worldly. 

: ' Sweet Prince the untainted virtue of your years 

Hath not div'd unto the world's deceit ; 

No more can you distinguish of a man, 

Than of his outward show, which, God, he knows 

Seldom, or never, jumpeth with the, heart." 

Richard III. Act III. I 

Did Bacon write these lines in Richard III. 



9 2 BA CON versus SHA KSPERE. 

for, or address them to, the young Prince Henry 
of England, who died, at the age of nineteen, in 
1612 ? Did he, when he became Lord Keeper 
or Lord Chancellor, say to his friend Ben Jon- 
son, what King Lear says to the Earl of Glos- 
ter : — " What, art mad ? A man may see how 
this world goes, with no eyes. Look with thine 
ears ; see how yond' Justice rails upon yond' 
simple thief. Hark in thine ear : change places ; 
and handy-dandy, which is the Justice, which is 
the thief?—" 

" Plate sin with gold 
And the strong lance of justice hurtless breaks ; 
Arm it in rags, a pigmy's straw doth pierce it." 

King Lear Act Vl.fg 

Ambitious. Wolsey charges Cromwell to 
fling away ambition for " by that sin fell the 
angels ; 

" How can man, then 
The image of his Maker hope to win by't ? 
Love thyself last ; cherish those hearts that hate thee ; 
Corruption wins not more than honesty." 

Henry VIII. Act IVi. 



BACON versus SHAKSPERE. 93 

Coyetousness. " which is idolatry," prop- 
erly signifies an intemperate ungoverned love of 
riches, is a word Shakspere has not a fond- 
ness for : he only uses it upon four occasions, and 
then does not use it seriously, or for any prac- 
tical or moral end, save in this instance. 

" When workmen strive to do better than well 
They do compound their skill in covetousness ; 
And often times, excusing of a fault 
Doth make the fault the worst by the excuse." 

King John Act IV. 2 

This dialogue, from a scene (enter three 
fishermen), in Pericles Prince of Tyre, well illus- 
trates the subject : — 

" Master, I wonder how the fishes live in the sea. 

Fisherman. Why as men do on land ; the great ones 
eat up the little ones. I compare our rich misers to noth- 
ing so fitly as a whale ; a plays and tumbles, diving the 
poor fry before him, and at last devours them all at 
a mouthful. Such whales have I heard on a' the land, 
who never leave gaping, till they have swallow'd the whole 
parish, church, steeple, bells and all." 

Base. „ You shall mark 

Many a duteous and knee-crooking knave, 
That, doting on his obsequious bondage, 



94 



BACON versus SHAKSPERE. 



Wears out his time, much like his master's ass, 
For nought but provender, and, when he's old, 
Whip me such honest knaves." [cashier'd ; 

Othello Act I. i. 
" The time of life is short ; 
To spend that shortness basely, were too long, 
If life did ride on a dial's point, 
Still ending at the arrival of an hour." 

I Henry IV. Act V. 2 
Selfish. Shakspere has not the word : it 
was no part of his nature. Again, it is not 
common to the literature of the period. Milton 
does not use it. Nevertheless our great poet, 
while poor old King Lear preaches to the raging 
elements, makes them preach to the selfish. 
What a memento of duty are these words of the 
storm-beaten King: — 

" Poor naked wretches, wheresoe'er you are, 
That bide the pelting of this pitiless storm 
How shall your houseless heads and unfed sides, 
Your loop'd and window'd raggedness, defend you 
From seasons such as these ? O, I have ta'en 
Too little care of this ! Take physic, Pomp, 
Expose thyself to feel what wretches feel ; 
That thou mayst shake the superflux to them, 
And show the heavens more just ! " 

King Lear Act III. 4 



DACOX versus SHAKSPERE. 95 

and lastly, Unscrupulous, a word neither in 
Shakspere nor Milton, in Paradise Lost, but if 
we take it in this sense, unprincipled, devoid of 
conscience, those who have sorrow of mind and 
a trembling heart, and the wicked who are like 
the troubled sea when it cannot rest, and whose 
waters cast up dirt ; then Shakspere speaks out 
boldly about the wretchedness of a bad con- 
science : — 

Better be with the dead, 

Than on the torture of the mind to lie 

In restless ecstasy. 

Macbeth Act III. 2 

Leave her to Heaven, 
And to those thorns that in her bosom lodge, 
To prick and sting her. 

Hamlet Act I. 5 
To my sick soul, as Sin's true nature is, 
Each toy seems prologue to some great amiss • 
So full of artless jealousy is Guilt, 
It spills itself in fearing to be spilt. 

Hamlet Act IV. 5 
Conscience is a thousand swords. 

Richard III. Act V. 2 



96 BACON versus SHAKSPERE. 

Oh, it is monstrous ! monstrous. 
Methought the billows spoke, and told me of it ; 
The winds did sing it to me ; and the thunder, 
That deep and dreadful organ pipe, pronounc'd 
The name of Prosper ; it did bass* my trespass. 

Tempest Act III. 3 
These selections have not been made idly, 
nor without purpose. Let those who feel inter- 
ested in the debated case — Bacon versus Shaks- 
pere — try to find parallels in thought and diction 
to them in Bacon's writings. 

Nathaniel Holmes lays too much stress 
upon these parallelisms between Bacon and 
Shakspere, and argues that because the works 
of Bacon were not printed and published until 
after the plays in question had appeared, Shaks- 
pere could not have borrowed from Bacon, and 
it is too ridiculous to suppose Bacon could 
have borrowed from such a man as Shakspere, 
— ergo, Bacon was himself the author of both 
the poetry and the prose. When Nathaniel 
Holmes and his brother " Theorists " give to 
the world any absolutely knozvn specimens of 



Outsound, or spoke louder than. 



BACOX versus SHAKSPERE. 97 

Bacon's poetry, with similitudes of thought, 
style, diction and feeling to those of Shaks- 
pere's which I have quoted, I shall confess 
myself disarmed, and that all " my imaginations 
are as foul as Vulcan's stithy." 

Bacon's writings contain many excellent 
views of Gospel truth, and though he may not 
have acted up to the precepts he has expounded, 
and may have thought with the ancient 
Gnostics, who held that their (so called) know- 
ledge (Gnosis) of the Gospel would save them, 
though leading a vicious life * ; " Let no one, 
thereupon," as Archbishop Whately counsels, 
" undervalue or neglect the lessons of wisdom 
which Bacon's writings may supply, and which 
we may, through divine grace, turn to better ac- 
count than he did himself. It would be absurd 



* His ethical and philosophical works abound with 
Biblical allusions. " Nothing," says Macaulay, " can be 
found in his writings, or in any other writings, more 
eloquent and pathetic than some passages which were 
apparently written under the influence of strong de- 
votional feeling." 



g 8 BACON versus SHAKSPERE. 

to infer, that because Bacon was a great phil- 
osopher, and far from a good man, therefore you 
will be a better man for keeping clear of his 
philosophy. His intellectual superiority was no 
more the cause of his moral failures, than Solo- 
mon's wisdom was of his. The intellectual 
light they enjoyed did not, indeed, keep them 
in the right path ; but you will not be more 
likely to walk in it, if you quench any light 
that is afforded you." 

This is wise counsel of Archbishop Whately, 
and I hope not be considered presumptuous 
in adding to it : — Don't be afraid to read Shaks- 
pere, because of the occasional vulgarities that 
sully his pages : make a fair allowance for the 
manners of his times before you censure his 
grossnesses ; of this, be assured, he has no more 
an evil design upon our moral sentiments 
than the satirical manners-painting Hogarth in 
his pictures of the Harlot's Progress and Mar- 
riage a la Mode. It is too much the fashion, 
now a day, for extreme sections of the Evange- 
lical party, whether belonging to the Church of 



BACON versus SHAKSPERE. 99 

England, or to the Dissenting Churches, to 
overlook the sacred lyrical writings of the early 
Greek and Latin Fathers, lest by a study of 
them they may get tainted with Catholicism. 
Consequently, some of the great outbursts of 
sacred song which Dr. J. Mason Neale has res- 
cued from the long buried past, and translated 
from the originals of St. Anatolius of Constan- 
tinople, Gregory Nazianzen, Basil the Great, 
Gregory of Nyssa, Clement of Alexandria, St. 
John of Damascus, Thomas Aquinas, St. Am- 
brose of Milan, and Prudentius remain unread 
and unsung by many Christian congregations. 
Perhaps, sections of the Catholic Church may 
also be charged with overlooking the lyrics of 
Charles Wesley, Isaac Watts, and William 
Cowper, for fear of being tainted with heresy. 
Again, the beauties of Byron, Shelley and Swift 
are lost to students of English Literature in con- 
sequence of " Cain" " Queen Mab" and " TJic 
Tale of the Tub" because they are forbidden by 
certain people of the Puritanical School, who 
are so scrupulous that they cannot in consci- 



ioo BACON versus SHAKSPERE. 

ence permit others to read those works which 
they have no mind to, or those which they think 
have no relish of salvation in them. The noble 
music of the Spenserian stanza in " Childe 
Harold's Pilgrimage" and the lyrical beauty, 
both of thought and language, in the " Sensitive 
Plant" and the nervous, bare, unadorned Eng- 
lish in the pure and powerful prose of the 
" Taller and Examiner" cease to be a benefit 
to our students ; and " things of beauty," which 
ought not only to be a " joy for ever," but a joy 
to everybody, are lost for ever to those who are 
prohibited from reading them. John Milton, 
though he was a Puritan* as Charles Kingsley 
has pointed out, was no rigid hater of the beau- 
tiful because it was Heathenish and Popish, no 
poet, perhaps, shows wider and truer sympathy 
with every form of the really beautiful in art, 
nature, and history than Milton, but he was a 
reader of his Bible and Shakspere ; he had 
looked God's word and his own soul in the face 



"Plays and Puritans'" — Miscellanies, 1859. 



BA COX versus SHA KSPERE. x o i 

and acted upon that which he had found. He 

felt to his heart's core, for he sang of it, the 

magnificence and worth of really high art, 

Of Gorgeous Tragedy 
Presenting Thebes' or Pelops' line, 
Or the Tale of Troy divine, 
Or what, though rare, of later age, 
Ennobled hath thy buskin'd stage. 

Read your Shakspere, peruse and re-peruse 
him, at your firesides, in meditative silence 
apart from the company of theatrical represen- 
tation ; you will be astonished what a treasure 
his pages disclose of noble sentiment, of acute 
observation, of instructive reflections, of sage 
advice, of practical truth, and moral wisdom. 
Read the writings of Bacon for their true philos- 
ophy, read and compare these two great Eliza- 
bethan lights, and the more carefully and 
attentively you do so, the more firmly am I im- 
pressed with the belief that nothing but a mis- 
guided and infatuated judgment will bring 
you to any other conclusion relative to Shaks- 
pere's authorship than that formed and openly 
stated by Ben Jonson and Milton, whose testi- 



i o 2 BA CON versus SHA KSPERE. 

mony alone ought to be conclusive against the 
" Baconian Theory? 

Read Bacon's paraphrastic version of the 
seven Psalms* dedicated to George Herbert, 
and you will not rank him in the scale of 
poets with Giles Fletcher and his brother 
Phineas, or with Robert Herrick and George 
Wither. You will confess that in his rhym- 
ing version he does not rise equal to the lyrics 
and hymns of Jeremy Taylor, who has been 
styled " our Shakspere in theology," and who 
though not considered a poet in the strictest 
sense of the term, will be ever endeared in 
the memory of the Anglican Church by his 
vastly comprehensive learning and exalted 
piety. It may be said of Bacon, though not 
a poet, that he is the Prince of Philosophers 
and has written his glorious Essays in prose 
with the pen of a poet; that is, supposing 
poetry does not mean mere rhyme, nor mere 



*The Psalms selected are I. XII. XC. CIV. 
CXXVI. CXXXVII. CXLIX. Bacon describes 
them as "the poor exercises of his sickness." 



BACON versus SHAKSPERE. 103 

metre, nor mere wit ; nor is like our modern 
jinglings, where sound is preferred to sense, pro- 
vided there be a lot of high-flown epithets and 
violent metaphors in inflated language. 

There is a prose, like that of the Bible, 
which rises into Poetry. Instance these exam- 
ples : — 

Who hath measured the waters 

In the hollow of his hand, 

And meted out heaven with the span, 

And comprehended the dust 

Of the earth in a measure, 

And weighed the mountains in scales 

And the hills in a balance ? 

Isaiah XL. 12 

The Heavens shall vanish away like smoke ; 

The earth shall wax old like a garment ; 

They that dwell therein shall die in like manner 

Isaiah II. 6 

The day of the Lord will come as a thief in the night ; 
The Heavens shall pass away with a great noise ; 
The elements shall melt with a fervent heat ; 
The earth and the things therein shall be burnt ; 
And all these things shall be dissolved 

St. Peter III. 10 

These prophecies of St. Peter and Isaiah, 

Shakspere must have had in his mind's eye, 



1 04 BA CON versus SHA KSPERE 

when he wrote those memorable lines, which 
are graven on the scroll beneath his effigies 
in Poet's Corner, Westminster Abbey: — 

The cloud-capt towers, the gorgeous palaces, 
The solemn temples, the great globe itself, 
Yea all which it inherit, shall dissolve • 
And like this insubstantial pageant faded, 
Leave not a rack behind. 

Had Bacon given us such a paraphrase 
as Reginald Heber's of the glittering throng 
of Jewish worshippers, as the mighty proces- 
sion, with their priests and musicians, moved, 
in stately measures, onward to the gorgeous- 
ly appointed temple, chanting this jubilant an- 
them of praise to Jehovah ! then praise may 
be awarded to him as a poet. Contrast Bacon's 
CIVth with Heber's CXXIInd. 

I was glad when they said to me 

Let us go into the House of JEHOVAH. 

My feet shall stand within thy gates, 

O Jerusalem ! 
Jerusalem is built a compact city, 
House join to house within it. 

Thither the Tribes go up, the Tribes of JEHOVAH, 
To the memorial feast for Israel, 
To praise the majesty of JEHOVAH. 



BACON versus SHAKSPERE. 105 

There stand the thrones of Judgment 

The thrones which the King hath established. 

Pray for the peace of Jerusalem; 

They shall prosper that love thee. 

Peace be within thy walls, 

And tranquility within thysalaces : 

I will say, Peace be within thee ; 

Because of the Temple of our GOD, 

I will seek thy good. 

The spirit of the original is not in this 
instance sacrificed. Shakespere, also, never lost 
sight of the spirit of the original, he never sac- 
rificed the marrow for the dry bones. 

With this slight digression, I shall dismiss 
the Shaksperian parallels with Bible truths, 
in the hope that many may be induced to at- 
tentively read their Bibles, and their Shaks- 
peres, and their Miltons, and their Bacons, 
and their Cudworths, and their Barrows and 
their Hookers, and the works of other great 
men of the sixteenth and seventeenth cen- 
turies, and quit their novels and their perio- 
dicals for a while. They will then not only 
learn the striking harmony that subsists be- 
tween the Bible and some of those great 



106 BACON versus SHAKSPERE. 

minds, — " gulfs of learning " — " monarchs of 
letters" ! They will also learn the better how- 
to refute the audacious, if not blasphemous 
utterances of such men as Nathaniel Holmes, 
who say : — " We worship in Jesus what belongs 
to Plato ; in Shakspere, what belongs to Bacon ; 
and in many others, what belongs to the real 
philosopher, the actual teacher, the true Saviour, 
and to Philosophy herself." 

I shall leave to the Divines to show that there 
is nothing in Christ that belongs to Plato ; but I 
may remark, cu passant, that St. Paul's descrip- 
tion of the spiritual condition of the heathen 
world in general, not merely of the ignorant, 
but also of the most learned and accomplished 
men of Greece and Rome, is generally allowed 
to be a faithful representation. The picture 
was drawn after the talents of such men as 
Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, and Cicero had been 
constantly exercised in endeavouring to en- 
lighten and improve mankind ; and it is very 
generally admitted that the utmost stretch of 
their researches terminated in mere opinion 



BA CON versus SHA KSPERE. i o 7 

and conjecture ; and that their labours were 
not sufficient to preserve themselves from 
doubt and error, much less to recover others 
from idolatry and corruption. 

Philosophy never yet framed a Religion 
suited to the wants of man, but it may safely 
be said that in Shakspere's plays there is so 
much of wise counsel and elevated thought, 
which, if known and followed, would guide a 
young man safely through the most critical 
periods of his life. The dramatist has most 
ably seconded the warnings of Solomon, and 
the teachings of St. Paul, who commands that 
we keep our bodies sacred as temples dedi- 
cated to the living God. It has been beauti- 
fully and truly said by Charles W. Stearns,* 
" Shakspere instructs not with the icy precepts 
of the puritan or pharisee, who confesses no 
sympathy with the temper, and would repress 
the natural gaiety of youth ; nor, as the grey 
bearded ascetic and hermit, whose fires are 



* Shakspeare Treasury. Charles W. Stearns, M.D., 
1869. 



1 08 BA CON versus SHA KSPERE. 

long ago extinct. But having himself ' sounded 
all the depths and shoals ' that young men 
must pass over in the voyage of life, he teaches 
them as though he were one of their own 
companions." 

Herein there is a marked contrast between 
the teachings of Bacon. His Essays, golden 
meditations as they are, were not issued in a 
complete form until the year 1625, a year 
before his death, when they were enlarged 
both in number and weight. They have 
about them something of the gravity of age, 
and the coldness of the grey-bearded ascetic. 
Bacon approaches a subject always on its 
serious side. It has been said of him, that 
" his habit of mind is leisurely : he does not 
write from any special stress of passionate im- 
pulse ; he does not create material so much 
as he comments upon material already exist- 
ing. He is usually full of allusions and re- 
ferences, and there his reader must be able to 
follow and understand." In other words, he 
does not write as a Poet who, according to 



BA CON versus SHA KSPERE. 1 09 

Wordsworth, " is a man pleased with his own 
passions and volitions, and who rejoices more 
than other men in the spirit of life that is 
in him ; delighting to contemplate similar 
volitions and passions as manifested in the 
goings on of the Universe, and habitually im- 
pelled to create where he does not find tkem." 
It cannot be said of Bacon, " He is doubtless 
at once the merriest and wisest of laughing 
philosophers ; while of Shakspere, in the larger 
part of his comic scenes, may be said, as is 
elegantly said by Xenophon of Socrates: — " He 
sports with a serious purpose," which Bacon 
never seems to do. 

Franklin Fisk Heard, in his preface to 
Bacon's Essays* says : " He lives among great 
ideas, as with great nobles, with whom he dare 
not be too familiar. In the tone of his mind 
there is ever something imperial. When he 



* Bacon's Essays with annotations by Richard 
Whately, D.D., and notes and glossarial index. Bos- 
ton, Lee & Shepherd, 1868. 



no BA CON versus SHA KSPERE. 

writes on building, he speaks of a palace, 
with spacious entrances and courts and ban- 
queting halls ; when he writes on gardens, he 
speaks of alleys and mounts, waste places and 
fountains, of a garden which is indeed prince- 
like ; " * * * * his Essays is a book 
plainly to lie in the closets of Statesmen and 
Princes, and designed to nurture the noblest 
natures." 

Hence, in my opinion, not so much a book 
for the guidance of youth, or one that they 
would take much delight in reading. 

Shakspere may be said to moralize amidst 
his mirthment, and preach amidst his playful- 
ness ; but while instruction tinctures his gaiety, 
it pervades his seriousness. 

Bacon in his Essay " Of Gardens " and in his 

" Cogitationes de Natura Rerum " does not 

speak of a 

Bank where the wild thyme blows, 
There oxslips and the nodding violet grows ; 
Quite o'er-canopied with luscious woodbine, 
With sweet musk-roses, and with eglantine. 

Midsummer Night's Dream Act II. i 



a / ( "< IN versus SHA KSPERE. 1 1 1 

nor of 

Pale primroses, 
That die unmarried, ere they can behold 
Bright Phoebus in his strength ; 

Winter's Tale Act IV. 4 

nor of daffodils, 

That come before the swallow dares, and take 
The winds of March with beauty ; 

Winter's Tale Act IV. 3 

nor of marigolds, 

That go to bed with the sun 
And with him rises weeping ; 

Winter's Tale Act IV. 3 
nor of violets, dim, 

But sweeter than the lids of Juno's eyes 
Or Cytherea's breath ; 

Winter's Tale Act IV. 3 

nor of 

Daisies-pied, and violets blue, 

And lady-smocks, all silver white, 
And cuckoo-buds of yellow hue, 

Which paint the meadows with delight , 

Love's Labor Lost Act V. 2 

nor of 

Crow-flowers, nettles, daisies, and long purples, 
That liberal shepherds give a grosser name, 
But our cold maids do dead men's fingers call them ; 

Hamlet Act IV. 7 



U2 BA CO A' versus SNA KSPERE. 

nor of 

The flower, that's like thy face, pale primrose, nor 
The azur'd harebell, like thy veins ; no nor 
The leaf of eglantine, whom not to slander 
Ont-sweeten'd not thy breath. 

Cymbeline Act IV. 2 
All these savour more of the meadows on 
the banks of the Avon, where all these flowers 
are so luxuriant, than the garden of " Graies 
Inne " * and more of the youth who strolled 
over the fields to Shottery and went a wooing 
there one Anne Hathaway, and in the summer's 
eve sat with her under " the willow that grows 
ascaunt the brook," and swore " he lov'd her 
well," than the philosophic lawyer who married 
" his wench at Maribone " when he was at the 
age of sentimental, not romantic, forty-five ; 



* Archbishop Whately says " Bacon was remarkably 
unskilful in the department of natural history. His 
observations were slight and inaccurate, and his rea- 
sonings from them very rash. And most remarkable 
of all is his error about the mistletoe ; a trifling- 
matter in itself ; but the casting up of a sum is a test 
of one's arithmetic, whether the items be farthings or 
pounds." 



BA COX versus SHA KSPERE. 1 1 3 

and when " the hey-day in the blood was tame, 
and humble, and waited upon the judgment." 

Let me now try to dispose of some of the 
stumbling blocks in the way of these " Baconian 
Theorists." The slight knowledge we possess of 
Shakspere's early life, school days, and educa- 
tion, his obscure and humble parentage, his 
profession as an actor, and the saying of Ben 
Jonson — "And though thou hadst small Latine, 
and lesse Greeke," the " Theorists " seize with 
avidity, and say because Shakspere drew mate- 
rials, ideas, and expressions, from the plays 
of Sophocles, Aristophanes and Euripides, and 
even from Plato, no less than from the Latin of 
Ovid, Virgil, Horace, Seneca, and Tacitus, he 
could not have written the plays ascribed to him. 
They ignore these lines in Jonson's eulogy : — 

" He was not for an age, but for all time 
And all the Muses still were in their prime 
When like Apollo he came forth to warm 
Our eares, or like a Mercury to charme ! " 

They are unwilling to believe that the plays 

of Shakspere have replaced those of the 

Latines and the Greekes! Ben Jonson, of 



1 1 4 BA CON versus SUA KSPERE. 

course, was only paying to Shakspere's mem- 
ory the usual lying compliments put on grave 
stones and monuments, he was merely imitat- 
ing Bacon's simulation in the nauseous adula- 
tion of his dedication of the First Book of " The 
Advancement of Learning " to King James. 

" For it seemeth much in a King, if, by 
the compendious extractions of other men's 
wits and labours, he can take hold of any 
superficial ornaments and shows of learning; 
or if he countenance and prefer learning and 
learned men ; but to drink indeed of the true 
fountains of learning, nay, to have such a foun- 
tain of learning in himself, in a King, and in 
a King born, is almost a miracle. And the 
more, because there is met in your Majesty a 
rare conjunction, as well of divine and sacred 
literature, as of profane and human ; so as yotir 
Majesty standeth invested of that triplicity, which 
in great veneration was ascribed to ancient 
Hermes; the power and fortune of a King, the 
knowledge and illtimination of a priest, and the 
learning and universality of a philosopher^ 



BA COX versus SNA KSPERE. i x 5 

The " Theorists " are truly dumb-founded at 
Shakspere's characters speaking the language of 
Nature ; at his always putting into the mouths 
of his dramatis persona, be they high or low. 
Kings, Princes, and Nobles, or Constables, 
Clowns, and Grave diggers, precisely what they 
must have said. They say to themselves, 
" Can such things be and overtake us like a 
summer's cloud without our special wonder," 
that this son of an ordinary yeoman, includ- 
ing the business of a glover, this " poacher," 
this " link boy," this " mere servitor or under- 
actor," this " puppet," this " ape," at the Globe 
and Blackfriars theatres, could rise to the rank 
of the writer of the best plays in the English 
language, rivalling those of Seneca and Plau- 
tus! * How can we, they say, believe it possible 



* Pope says : — 

" Honour and shame from no condition rise," 
To wit : — 

Beranger, a printer's compositor, taught himself, 
and began to publish at 16. 

Ben Jonson, a bricklayer's lad, fairly worked his way 



1 1 6 BA CON versus SHA KSPERE. 

that he has written these plays, &c, when 
there is no original manuscript of any play, 
or poem, letter, or other prose composition in 
the handwriting of William Shakspere as yet 
discovered ! Et tu quoque — Have the " Theo- 
rists " produced any manuscripts of any poetry, 
sonnets, masques and plays of Francis Bacon ? 
No — of course, there is no necessity! the 



upward through Westminster and Cambridge, and be- 
came famous by his " Every Man in his Humour," at 24. 

Burns, a ploughboy, was a village celebrity at 16, 
and soon after began to write. 

To show that a Poet's talents are frequently dis- 
played early in youth, instance the following : — 

Ovid wrote verses from boyhood. 

Pope published his pastorals at 16, and translated 
the "Iliad" between 25 and 30. 

Schiller became famous through his " Brigands " 
at 23. 

Byron wrote his " English Bards and Scotch Re- 
viewers" at 21. 

Coleridge was rilled with poetry and metaphysics 
at 15. 

Dibdin, the naval ballad writer, his first opera was 
acted at Covent Garden when he was 16. 

Dryden wrote good verses at 17. 



BA COX versus SHA KSPERE. i x 7 

philosopher, not wishing to be known as the 
author, ordered them to be destroyed! very 
like ! very like ! * — Why may not Heminge 
and Condell, after the publication of the 1623 
Folio, considered the Shaksperian Manuscripts 
of no value, and destroyed them ; or if they 
had retained the properties and archives of the 
Blackfriars theatre, may they not have been 
made way with either by the fanatical puritans 
in the reigns of King James I. and Charles I. 



* Bacon, had he veritably been the author, he 
would not have so acted ; the idea is irrational and 
absurd. He must have been a fool not to have known 
that such plays would have immortalized him. He 
knew the repute with which they were held in by 
Queen Elizabeth and King James and the nobles of 
both reigns. And even admitting for the sake of 
argument that he did not wish to be known as the 
author during his life, would not his tatling, fidgety 
friend, Tobie Matthew, have divulged the authorship ? 
Would Selden and Herbert, who were to be consulted 
by Brother Constable relative to all Bacon's manu- 
script compositions, and the fragments of such as 
were not finished, if they had found any writings 
similar to Shakspere's, withheld or destroyed them ? 



1 1 8 BA CON versiis SHA KSPERE. 

and of the Commonwealth, * or consumed by 
the great fire of London, 3rd Sept., 1666 ? 

It is all surmise and conjecture about these 
manuscripts so far as Bacon is concerned ; and 
I must confess after the most careful and im- 
partial reading of Nathaniel Holmes's work, 
" The Authorship of Shakspere," that I never 
read a more specious one, nor one more full 
of crotchets and hobbies, nor one so entirely 
dependent on a reasoning without facts, and on 
that oily monosyllable IF. 

Like Gratiano's, in the Merchant of Venice, 
" his reasons are as two grains of wheat hid 
in two bushels of chaff ; you shall seek all day 
ere you find them : and when you have them 
they are not worth the search," — that is, in con- 
firmation of the " Baconian Theory." 

Nevertheless " The Authorship of Shaks- 
pere " has its uses for the student in the 



* In that age, poetry and novels were publicly 
destroyed by the Bishops, and privately by the Puri- 
tans. In the Commonwealth the stage was totally 
abolished. 



BA CON versus SHA KSPERE. 1 1 g 

carefully prepared list of parallelisms between 
the Prince of Poets and the Prince of Phi- 
losophers, " who made the Elizabethan age a 
more glorious and important era in the history 
of the human mind than the age of Pericles, of 
Augustus, of Leo." These parallelisms, though 
not amounting in themselves to anything 
more than mere conjectural evidence in favour 
of the " Baconian Theory", are very interesting 
and instructive, and show that there are, as the 
Apostle says in his Epistle to the Corinthians, 
" so many kinds of voices in the world, and none 
of them is without signification" — many voices 
which seem to breathe a similar spirit, there- 
fore parallels are not without signification* 



* Unfortunately for the "Theorists" these paral- 
lels are " double-edged " — many of them were writ- 
ten years after the sonnets and plays, and some 
after Shakspere's death. So that it may be asked : — 
Did Bacon borrow from Shakspere ? 

Often times the parallels are nothing more than 
the accidental use of the very verbs, nouns, and adjec- 
tives in common use by most of the writers of the 
period. 



1 2 o BA CON versus SUA KSPERE. 

Take the English Christian classic writers of 
the sixteenth and seventeeth centuries, and you 
will find many parallels between them and the 
Heathen classic writers. Expressions and sen- 
timents found in Socrates, Plato, ^enophon, 
Aristotle, Seneca, Juvenal, Quintillian, Hesiod, 
Persius, Horace and other Greek and Latin au- 
thors find an echo in Shakspere, Bacon, Cecil, 
Selden, Fuller, Cotton, Milton, Taylor, Hooker, 
Walton, Donne, Barrow, South, Flavel, Burton, 
and Leighton, thereby proving a fragment of 
Heraclitus, " all human tinders landings are 
nourished by one Divine Word? 

But to return to Jonson's saying of " small 
Latine and lesse Greeke ;" it implies that 
Shakspere had a knowledge of both, and it is 
more than likely that he received a sound ed- 
ucation at the Grammar School at Stratford, at 
least education enough to read ordinary Latin 
Books and Translations. His father, having 
reached the highest distinction which it was in 
the power of his fellow townsmen to bestow, 
that of High Bailiff or Chief Magistrate, would 



BA CON versus SHA KSPERE. 1 2 1 

have the privilege of sending his son William 
to the Grammar School connected with the 
Corporation of Stratford ; and for the sake of 
argument, I have a ri^ht to assume from the 
internal evidence of Shakspere's writings, that 
he received a solid education, though he may 
not have received an academical and classical 
education, such as was obtainable in the six- 
teenth century at "those twins of learning 
Ipswich and Oxford," nor have been so ripe 
and good a Scholar as their princely founder 
Cardinal Wolsey. 

At all events he was stored with good vigor- 
ous and idiomatic English. From his writings 
there was unquestionably one Book with which 
he was familiar, the Great Bible of Tyndale's, 
revised by Coverdale, which doubtless his 
mother, the gentle Mary Arden, often read 
to him. He would thus, as a boy, get impress- 
ed with the story of Joseph sold into slavery and 
advanced to honour; and how the Lord was 
with the child Samuel ; and that God sent his 
angel to shut the Lion's mouths that they should 



122 BACON versus SHAKSPERE. 

not hurt his servant Daniel ; and also sent his 
angel to preserve the three children in the fiery- 
furnace. He would learn how Elijah was fed 
at the brook . Cherith by ravens ; and of that 
Herod who murdered the Innocents ; and of 
Christ blessing little children, and teaching the 
people that the poor in spirit, the meek, the 
just, the merciful, the pure in heart, the peace 
makers were the happy and beloved of God. 

One thing may be fairly assumed, that 
Shakspere had wise and good masters at Strat- 
ford's Grammar school of the Holy Guild. 
" These Grammar Schools,' 1 * as Charles Knight 
observes, " were wise institutions, they opened 
the road to usefulness and honour to the 
humblest in the land ; they bestowed upon the 
son of the peasant the same advantages as the 
son of the noble could receive from the most 
accomplished teacher is his father's halls." In 
other words, Shakspere, the son of the yeoman, 



* Philip Sidney and Fulke Greville were form- 
fellows at the Free Grammar School of Shrewsbury. 



BA COA T versus SHA KSPERE. 1 2 3 

had as a good a chance to be educated as 
Henry Wriothesly the accomplished Earl of 
Southampton. Who shall say he did not pro- 
fitably use his advantage ? Whatever his edu- 
cation was, he evidently had read much, and 
was very well accomplished in the most useful 
parts of human learning. 

Hugh Miller has upon this subject a few 
sensible and pertinent remarks* — 

" There has been much written on the learn- 
ing of Shakspere, but not much to the purpose : 
one of our old Scotch proverbs is worth all the 
dissertations on the subject I have yet seen, 
" Gods Bairns are eath to lear" i. e. easily 
instructed. Shakspere must, I suppose, have 
read many more books than Homer (we may 
be sure every good book that came in his way, 
and some bad ones), and yet Homer is held to 
have known a thing or two. The more ancient 
poet was unquestionably as ignorant of English 



* First Impressions of England and its People, 
p. 259. London Edition, 1874. 



i2 4 BA C0N versus SHA KSPERE. 

as the more modern one of Greek ; and as one 
produced the Iliad without any acquaintance 
with Hamlet, I do not see why the other may 
not have produced Hamlet without any acquain- 
tance with the Iliad. Johnson was quite in the 
right in holding, that though the writings of 
Shakspere exhibit much knowledge, it is often 
such knowledge as books did not supply. He 
might have added further, that the knowledge 
they display, which books did supply, is of a 
kind which might be all found in English 
books at the time, — fully one half of it, indeed, 
in the Romances of the period. Every great 
writer, in the department in which he achieves 
his greatness, whether he be a learned Milton, 
or an unlearned Burns, is self taught." 

Rapin, in his reflections, speaking of the 
necessary qualities belonging to a poet, tells 
us : — " He must have a genius extraordinary ; 
great natural gifts; a wit, just, fruitful, piercing, 
solid and universal ; an understanding clear 
and distinct ; an imagination neat and pleas- 
ant ; an elevation of soul that depends not only 



BA CON versus SHA KSPERE. 1 2 5 

on art or study, but is purely the gift of Heaven, 
which must be sustained by a lively sense and 
vivacity; judgment to consider wisely of things, 
and vivacity for the beautiful expression of them." 
All of which, " I must powerfully and potently 
believe" Shakspere possessed, as I do that " old 
men have grey beards and their faces are wrin- 
kled ;" that is, if he is the author of the plays, 
poems and sonnets. 

From Milton's classical education, it is not 
all at to be wondered that there should be found 
in his writings so many imitations of Homer, 
Virgil, Horace, and Ovid, and you can see from 
whence they are derived. Had not Shakspere 
enough Latin to abstract all he required from 
Virgil, Horace, and Ovid? Had he not also 
for ready use translations of Terence, Seneca, 
Livy, and Tacitus ; and of Homer, Herodotus, 
Plutarch, Epictetus, Hippocrates and Galen ? 
Shakspere presents numerous instances of 
undesigned resemblance to the Ancients ; pass- 
ages purely original in him, may be parallelled 
with corresponding passages of writers with 



i 2 6 BA CON versus SUA KSPERE. 

whom he may have had but a slight acquaint- 
ance. Nathaniel Holmes, not having proved 
by external evidence that Bacon is the author 
of Shakspere's plays, at least not to my mind, 
I maintain my perfect right to prove by internal 
evidence that Shakspere was a tolerably good 
classical scholar ; that he had practical wisdom 
together with a wonderfully varied knowledge of 
the different arts and pursuits of life ; of military 
science, witness his King John, Richard II. and 
III. Henry IV. V. and VI. with their war pic- 
tures ; — this military knowledge he could not 
have obtained from Bacon — of horticultural and 
rural life; — these he might have got from his 
native county Warwick — of the sea and what- 
ever belongs to nautical matters ; of wood- 
craft, field sports, falconry and hunting ; — these 
were not the forte of the Reader of Gray's Inn, 
and the Attorney General to King James ; 
though it is true that in the eighth decade of 
the nineteenth century we find a Reverend and 
grey-bearded octogenarian in the Diocese of 
Lincoln, a breeder of race horses. 



BA CON versus SNA KSPERE. 1 2 7 

Nathaniel Holmes does not give any par- 
allels from Bacon's writings upon the soldier's 
and sailor's life, or upon field sports. 

Milton, according to his able and learned 
biographer and editor, (Thomas Newton D.D.) 
was, at the age of seventeen, a very good clas- 
sical scholar, and master of several languages, 
and ^ was fitted for the University of Cam- 
bridge at St. Paul's Grammar School ; with 
these facts, judging from the phrenological 
development of Shaksperes massy brain cover 
or " globe-like cranium," when compared with 
that of Milton's, there would be no difficulty 
in the author of " Venus and Adonis " acquir- 
ing a tolerable proficiency in the Latin tongue 
before he left the Grammar School of the 
Holy Guild at Stratford-on-Avon, or at least 
enough to be able to read and understand his 
Ovid, Virgil, and Horace. If he did not, did 
he get his friend Ben Jonson to point out 
to him Horace, when Hamlet utters this 
somewhat obscurely evolved observation which 
precedes the entrance of the Ghost ? 



i 2 8 BA CON versus SHA KSPERE. 

So, oft it chances in particular men, 
That for some vicious mole of Nature in them, 
As, in their birth, — wherein they are not guilty 
Since Nature cannot choose his origin — &c. 

Hamlet Act I. 4 

This nice and true observation, founded 

on the quick-sightedness of our Nature to the 

faults of others, occurs more than once in the 

manner's painting Horace 

Discit enim citius, meminitque libentius illud 
Quod quis deridet, quam quod probat et veneratus. 

Lib : II. Epist. I. 

Vitiis mediocribus, ac mea paucis, 

Mendosa est natura, alioqui recta ; velut si 
Egregio inspersos reprendas corpore ncevos. 

Lib : I. Sat. 6 

But soft ! methinks I scent the morning air ; 
The glowworm shews the matin to be near, 
And 'gins to pale his uneffectual fire. 

Hamlet Act I. 5 

This remarkably resembles what Virgil 
makes the ghost of Anchises say to his son 
v^neas : — 

Jamque vale ! torquet medios nox humida cursus, 
Ut me soevus equis Oriens adflavit anhelis. 

^En. Book V. 



BA CON versus SHA KSPERE. 1 2 9 

Like the ghost of Anchiscs, this of Ham- 
let's father, speaks of his abode : — 

Non me impia namque 

Tartara habent, tristesque umbrae. 

In Coriolanus, Act IV., Sc. 1., 

I shall be lov'd, when I am lack'd, 

exactly agrees with the Horatian Remark : — 

Urit qui fulgore, extindus amabitur idem. 

This idea is thus beautifully unfolded by 
Cowper : — 

Not to understand a treasure's worth, 

Till time hath stolen away the slighted good, 

Is cause of half our poverty. 

It is a favourite sentiment with Shakspere : 
— thus, in Antony and Cleopatra, Act I. Sc. 4 : 

It hath been taught us from the primal state, 
That he, which is, was wish'd, until he were ; 
That the ebb'd man, ne'er lov'd till ne'er worth love, 
Comes dear'd by being lack'd. 

In the Tempest the following fine apostro- 
phe has been supposed an imitation of Medea's 



1 3 o BA CON versus SHA KSPERE. 

speech in Ovid's Metam, Lib. VII., which was 
translated before the play was written,* 

Auraeque, et venti, montesque, amnesque, lacusque, 
Dique omnes memorum, &c. 

The resemblance is remarkable ; but Shaks- 
pere has left Ovid far behind, in richness of 
imagery and energy of diction. There is an 
unusual and admirable stateliness and solemn- 
ity in the flow and tone of these noble lines, 
which are some of our poet's latest productions, 
showing, as Bacon says : — " True art is always 
capable of advancing!" 1 

Ye elves of hills, brooks, standing lakes, and groves ; 
And ye that on the sands with printless foot 
Do chase the ebbing Neptune, and do fly him 
When he comes back ; you demi-puppets, that 
By moonshine do the green-sour ringlets make, 
Whereof the ewe not bites ; and you whose pastime 
Is to make midnight mushrooms ; that rejoice 
To hear the solemn curfew ; by whose aid 
(Weak masters though ye be) I have bedimm'd 
The noon-tide Sun, called forth the mutinous winds, 
And 'twixt the green sea and the azur'd vault 
Set roaring war : to the dread rattling thunder 



* See Golding's Ovid, translated in 1567. 



BACON versus SHAKSPERE. 



131 



Have I given fire, and rifted Jove's stout oak 
With his own bolt : the strong-bas'd promontory 
Have I made shake, and by the spurs pluck'd up 
The pine and cedar : graves, at my command, 
Have wak'd their sleepers ; op'd and let them forth 
By my most potent art." 

Tempest Act V. 1 

There is no parallel to this in Bacon ! and 
I ask the classic scholar to produce one among 
all the English translations of Ovid ? 

Shakspere may have read his Ovid for 
another purpose, especially the De Tristibus 
in which the Latin Poet endeavours to make 
amends for his licentious poems, and gives 
Augustus a sort of plan for a public reforma- 
tion. Amongst other things he advises sup- 
pressing of plays " as being the promoters and 
dissolution of manners." 

" Ut tamen hoc fatear, ludi quoque semina prcebent 
Nequitiae : tolli tota theatra jube." 

Take the plays of some of Shakspere's 
contemporaries, which Ben Jonson thus de- 
scribes in his own noble prose, " wherein noth- 
ing but the filth of the mire is uttered and 



1 3 2 BA CON versus SHA KSPERE. 

that with such impropriety of phrase, such 
plenty of solecisms, such dearth of sense, so 
bold prolepses, such racked metaphors, with 
(indecency) able to violate the ear of a Pagan, 
and blasphemy to turn the blood of a Chris- 
tian to water," and behold how Shakspere 
reformed the Drama, showing in his own plays 
Vice her own deformity, holding her up to detes- 
tation and interesting the heart in the cause 
of Virtue and Humanity. 

" There is in Shakspere's plays," says a 
Reverend critic,* " a certain manly, healthy, and 
fearless hardihood, as opposed to an effemi- 
nate, sickly, nervous sensitiveness of moral 
feeling, which is far better suited than the 
latter to the rude atmosphere of ' this work- 
ing-day world,' and quite as nearly allied to 
sincerity and virtue. The very openness and 
coarseness of some of Shakspere's coarse 
passages brings its own antidote : it is vice 



* Remarks on the Moral Influence of Shakspere's 
Plays, by Thos. Grinfield, M.A., Longmans 1850. 



BACON versus SHAKSPERE. 133 

without disguise; there is nothing insidious; 
nothing meretricious ; no serpent under the 
rose ; no poison dipt in honey ; as in the 
smooth amatory minstrels and novelists of the 
eighteenth and nineteenth centuries." 

Or, to use the language of Coleridge one of 
our poet's purest and best of critics : — " Shaks- 
pere has no interesting incests, no virtuous 
vice ; he never renders that amiable which 
Religion and Reason alike teach us to detest" 

Gervinus says: — " The relation of Shakspere's 
poetry to morality and to moral influence upon 
man is most perfect ; in this respect, from Aris- 
totle to Schiller, nothing higher has been asked 
of poetry than that which Shakspere rendered. 
If Bacon felt the lack of a science of human 
passions, he rightly thought that historians and 
poets supplied this science, and he might well 
have searched for this science before all in his 
neighbour Shakspere ; for no other poetry has 
taught as his has done, by reminders and warn- 
ings, that the taming of the passions is the aim 
of civilization." 



i 3 4 BA CON versus SHA KSPERE. 

Had Bacon's Essays been published during 
Shakspere's time, and had our Poet read them, 
he may have, possibly, acted upon the great 
philosopher's advice, who thus writes : — " As for 
jests there are certain things, which ought to 
be privileged from them, (*. e. plays and such 
like) namely, Religion, matters of state, great 
persons, any man's present business of import- 
ance; and any case that deserveth pity." 
Nevertheless, though Bacon's Essays and 
works were not published, is it not possible, 
nay even probable, that there may have been 
an intimacy or interchange of thought between 
Shakspere and Bacon, though not to such an 
extent as that existing between Bacon and 
Jonson ? For, if Bacon really took the great 
interest in the drama, masques, and such like, 
as is represented, I cannot see how he could 
avoid the knowledge of such a man as Shaks- 
pere, the master spirit of Tragedy and Comedy ; 
neither how Shakspere should not have made 
the acquaintance of Bacon if aware of his 
fondness for such productions, and his intimacy 



BA CON versus SHA KSPERE. 1 3 5 

with so many literate associates in common, 
including Selden, Cotton, Camden, Carew, 
Raleigh, and some " divers of worship " who 
met at the Mermaid, not for wet combats as 
some of the " Baconian Theorists " have basely 
insinuated, but to enjoy the feast of reason 
and the flow of soul, though it did not belong 
to the philosopher's gravity and wisdom to resort 
to such a place. 

Of this club, or Parliament of Genius, which 
combined more talent than ever met together 
before or since, Ben Jonson was a member ; and 
here for many years he regularly repaired with 
Shakspere, Beaumont, Fletcher, Selden, Cotton, 
Carew, Martin, Donne, and many others, whose 
names even at this distant period, call up a 
mingled feeling of reverence and respect. Jon- 
son tells us himself in his graceful poem " Invi- 
ting a Friend to Supper: " — 

But that which most doth take my muse and me, 

Is a pure cup of rich Canary wine, 

Which is the Mermaid's now, but shall be mine. 

But the Canary was to be used, not abused: — 



1 36 BA CON versus SHA KSPERE. 

Of this we shall sup free, but moderately ; 
Nor shall our cups make any guilty men : 
But at our parting we will be as when 
We innocently met. No simple word, 
That shall be utter'd at our mirthful board, 
Shall make us sad next morning, or affright 
The liberty that we'll enjoy to night. 

This is not the principle of intemperance 
at any rate, nor did the associates of Jonson 
meet at the " Mermaid " for mere sensual grati- 
fication. Raleigh's club-meetings were not the 
feasts of the senses alone ; the members were 
Erziditi, Urbani, Hilares, Honesti ; there, were 
elegance without extravagance, wit without 
malice, high converse without meddling with 
sacred things, argumentation without violence, 
and conviviality without drunkenness. 

Intemperance in strong drinks is condemned 
by Shakspere when he makes Michael Cassio 
say: — 

O that men should put an enemy into their mouths 
to steal away their brains ! that we should with joy, revel, 
pleasure, and applause, transform ourselves to beasts. 

Caesar says : — 

It's monstrous labour when I wash my brain, 

And it grows fouler. 



BA CON versus SHA KSPERE. 1 3 7 

Macduff says : — 

Boundless intemperance 
In nature is a tyranny ; it hath been 
Th' untimely emptying of the unhappy throne, 
And fall of many kings. 

Hamlet, speaking of excessive drinking, 

says : — 

It is a custom 
More honour'd in the breach than the observance. 

And indeed, it takes 

From our achievements, though perform'd at height, 
The pith and marrow of our attribute. 

Gower, the author of " Confessio Amantis," 
a piece upon which his character and reputa- 
tion are almost entirely founded, is said to 
have made up what he wanted in invention, 
from his common-place book, like our modern 
" enquire-within books ; " which was stored with 
an inexhaustible fund of instructing maxims, 
axioms, pleasant narrations and philosophical 
deductions ; also that he very probably con- 
ducted his associate Chaucer into those pro- 
found mysteries which had been just opened 
by Roger Bacon. It can be proved that 






138 BACON versus SHAKSPEER. 

Gower derived much information from the 
Secretum Secretorum, a sort of abridgement of 
the Aristotleian philosophy, filled with many 
Arabian innovations and absurdities and en- 
riched with an appendix concerning phlebot- 
omy, justice, public notaries, tournaments, and 
physiognomy, rather than from the Latin 
translations of Aristotle. May not Ben Jon- 
son have conducted his associate Shakspere 
into some of the profound philosophical mys- 
teries which he had translated for Bacon? 
Moreover, may not Shakspere have kept a 
common-place book, or derived information 
from this said Secretum Secretorum, and also 
from " certaine workes of Galen, Englyshed by 
Thomas Gale, 1586? and from the Ethiques of 
Aristotle, &c, Ihon Wylkinson; printed by 
Grafton, Printer to King Edward VI., 1547?" 
Further, may not Shakspere have picked up 
much of his knowledge of legal terms from 
his associate Selden, who was elected in May, 
1604, a member of the Society of the Inner 
Temple, and in 1606 had drawn up an his- 



BA CON versus SHA KSPERE. 1 3 9 

torical treatise on the Civil Government of 
England before the coming in of the Nor- 
mans ? If Selden was in the habit of min- 
gling with the wits that frequented the " Mer- 
maid," his associates may have participated some- 
what of his nature, for he was not given to trifling 
pursuits, nor vicious pleasures, he, very likely, 
only formed one of them to hear and enjoy 

Words that have been 
So nimble, and so full of subtle flame, 
As if that every one from whom they came 
Had met to put his whole wit into a jest. 

From the many-sided genius Raleigh, who 
has been well styled " the soldier, statesman, 
scholar, and sea adventurer," who had his heart 
full of most chivalrous worship for England's 
tutelary genius, may not Shakspere have ob- 
tained some of the military knowledge of Tactics, 
Discipline, Strategy, and Generalship, Soldier's 
life, &c, evinced so strongly in many of his 
plays; to wit: — King John, Richard II. and 
III. Henry IV. V. and VI., Coriolanus, Julius 
Caesar, and Antony & Cleopatra ? 



i 4 o BACON versus SHAKSPERE. 

Harry the Vth, Hotspur, Falconbridge and 
Talbot are real soldiers, not " great arithme- 
ticians, fellows that had never set a squadron 
in the field ; " they had something more in them 
than " bookish theorie." 

It may be argued — all this is mere hypoth- 
esis — granted — the " Baconian Theory " hinges 
upon an IF! The " retort courteous " may ask 
if these worthies, Raleigh, Selden, Jonson, 
Shakspere, and other literary friends were in 
the habit of meeting at the " Mermaid," (and 
this will scarcely be open to question), then 
is it to be supposed that every meeting was 
a mere Symposium, or a keen encounter of 
the wits similar to that between Mercutio and 
Romeo in the fourth scene of the second act 
of Romeo and Juliet? Some of these meetings 
were devoted to social and intellectual converse ; 
for the men in those days were sociable ani- 
mals, and were, perhaps, very little different to 
the members of different clubs, which Addison, 
in the Spectator, Chap. IX. has so admirably 
described, where a set of men finding them- 



BACON versus SHAKSPERE. 141 

selves agree in any particular, though ever so 
trivial, establish themselves in a kind of fratern- 
ity. What was done in the days of Burke, Gar- 
rick, Reynolds, Johnson, Goldsmith, Walpole, 
and Macklin, when scholars, statesmen, authors, 
and actors, met to enjoy the flow of soul and talk 
on the " Sublime and Beautiful," was probably 
done at the " Mermaid," by Raleigh, Selden, 
Cotton, Donne, Shakspere, Beaumont, Fletcher, 
and rare Ben Jonson. 

Each possessed an undisputed claim on 
the attention and sympathy of the other; a 
claim founded on the sentiment that awakened 
a burst of applause in a Roman Theatre 
" Homo sunt ; Humani nihil a me alienum 
puto ;" — "Human myself, nothing human can 
fail to interest me." 

I have already devoted too much time and 
space in rebuttal of the insane " Baconian 
Theory," much more, perhaps, than the subject 
warrants. The few readers who read the writ- 
ings of Shakspere and of his contemporaries 
slowly, observantly, and reflectively, and, as 



1 42 BA CON verstis SHA KSPERE. 

Bacon would say, chewingly, will need no 
argument to convince them that Shakspere, 
himself is the author of the plays by common 
consent ascribed to him. But as there are so 
many throughout the world who are glad to 
take their opinions at second hand from their 
neighbours, and save themselves the trouble 
of examination and reflection, and are ready 
to place implicit reliance on the ipse dixit of 
any one who will write a book, I have assayed 
to sling a stone at Nathaniel Holmes for his 
wicked and wanton attempt to disturb our 
faith and destroy an innocent belief so full of 
pleasure. For wicked it is to assail the right- 
eous memory of the dead, and wanton it is to 
argue away, upon purely conjectural premises, 
the literary character of another. If no more 
evidence either external or internal can be 
brought by the " Baconians " to disprove 
Shakspere 's authorship, my faith remains stead- 
fast. If I have failed to convince my readers 
so far, that Shakspere the actor is Shakspere 
the Poet, let me try to induce them to examine 



BACON versus SHAKSPERE. i 43 

the question for themselves by the light of 
contemporaneous authors and history; by the 
characters of the two men ; by analogy. Your 
great philosophers, metaphysicians, and essay- 
ists, whose works are the result of just, pure, and 
strict enquiry and experiment have not been 
Poets and Dramatists since the commencement 
of letters. Bacon being Shakspere is incon- 
sistent with all precedent and all subsequent 
literary combinations. With the object of 
helping the reader to form a conclusion, I 
have put in parallel columns a list of authors 
and their works, and a list of Poets and Dra- 
matists, in a sort of chronological order, to 
show at a glance that the Poet's mind is of a 
different stamp or kind to that of the Philos- 
opher. 

ANCIENT. 

THALES, The father of HOMER, The father of 

Greek Philosophy. Poets. 

Socrates and Plato. yEschylus and Sophocles. 

Archimides and Aristotle. Pindarus and Anacreon. 

Pliny and Cicero. Horace and Catullus. 



144 



BACON versus SHAKSPERE. 



MODERN. 



Roger Bacon, 

Experimental Philosopher. 
Richd. Hooker, 

Ecclesiastical Polity. 
Bacon (Lord Verulam), 

Novum Organum. 
Sir Kenelm Digby, 

Metaphysician. 
Ralph Cudworth, 

Intellectual System, 
Thomas Hobbes, 

The Leviathan. 
John Locke, 

The Understanding. 
Sir Isaac Newton, 

Principles of Philosophy. 
Joseph Butler, 

The Analogy. 
David Hume, 

Historian. 
Hugh Blair, 

Rhetoric. 
Thomas Brown, 

Lectures on Philosophy. 
Jeremy Bentham, 

Morals. 
Dugald Stewart, 

Moral Philosophy. 



Geoffrey Chancer, 

Canterbury Tales. 
Edmund Spenser, 
Farie Queene. 
William Shakspere, 

England's Dramatist. 
Ben Jonson, 

Dramatist. 
John Milton, 

Paradise Lost. 
Samuel Butler, 
Hudibras. 
John Dryden, 

Translator of Virgil. 
Joseph Addison, 

The Spectator. 
Alexander Pope, 

Translator of Homer. 
Oliver Goldsmith, 

Poet and Novelist. 
William Cowper, 

The Task. 
Percy Bysshe Shelley, 

Queen Mab. 
Robert Southey, 

Poet Laureate. 
Thomas Campbell, 

Pleasures of Hope, 



BACON versus SHAKSPERE. 145 

In the left column will be found a list of 
classical authors of " Books of Solidity ; " books 
not the mere reflection of current sentiments, 
but enlighteners and improvers of them. In 
the riffht column will be found a list of bril- 

o 

liant poets showing the differing order of the 
Poetic mind. Let any one read, even cursorily, 
the works of these Philosophers, Dramatists, 
and Poets, and I feel certain they will come 
to this conclusion, that Bacon never wrote the 
plays and poems of Shakspere. Interchange 
of or joint authorship is quite as likely be- 
tween Locke and Dryden, Newton and Addi- 
son, Blair and Cowper, &c, &c, as between 
Bacon and Shakspere. Do not my dear readers 
take my ipse dixit, — read and judge for your- 
selves. Take Bacon's advice about reading, 
which is after this fashion, read a book not 
with the object of finding faults, but to weigh 
and consider its statements. 

Let the reader ask himself whether the 
statements of the author be true or fallacious, 
built upon facts or hypotheses, and having 



146 BACON versus SHAKSPERE. 

decided those points it matters not from what 
quarter the book comes. Every man 1 being 
endowed with the faculty of judging, it is the 
reader's own fault if he allows his prejudices 
to rob him of the benefits of literature. 

Before dismissing the subject I have to 
say a few words more in acknowledgment of 
the difficulty in refuting the arguments of such 
men as Nathaniel Holmes, because their con- 
jectures and improbabilities have to be met with 
an almost utter absence of external informa- 
tion relative to Shakspere's Dramatic history. 
Were it my cue to descant upon the writings 
of our great poet " whose works were to charm 
unborn ages — to sweeten our sympathies — to 
beguile our solitude — to enlarge our hearts, 
and to laugh away our spleen " — " the field 
would be almost as boundless as the sea, yet 
as full of beauty and variety as the land." I 
should be oppressed, as it were, by abundance 
and filled with matter and material for a vol- 
ume, — inopem me copia fecit. But as it is, the 
" Genius of Biography " has neglected Shaks- 



DA COX versus SNA A' S J' ERE. 1 47 

pere, withheld his personal history, told us 
nothing of the development of his wondrous 
mind. The channels of his onward career are 
dried up ; the sources from which he obtained 
his noble and unrivalled characteristics are 
undiscovered — all mere tradition — nothing ab- 
solute and definite — amazement fills up the 
void. These materials being denied there is 
nothing to fall back upon but his incompara- 
ble genius, marvellous conception, mimetic 
power and wonderful invention, which are 
foolishness and a stumbling-block to the " Ba- 
conian Theorists," who consider it simply pre- 
posterous and absurd that the matchless works 
known by his name, plays the most philo- 
sophical in the English language should have 
been written by a man whose life is so ob- 
scure and who was so utterly negligent of his 
writings that he neither collected nor edited 
them ! Granted — the fact is melancholic — 
never mind — What knowledge have we of 
Homer's life ? None ! Some placing him either 
in David or Solomon's reign — others affirm- 



1 48 BA CON versus SUA KSPERE. 

ing that he was begot of a Genius in the isle 
of Io and born of a Virgin who died upon 
giving birth to the child who was brought up 
by Maeon, King of the Lydians. His obscure 
life has not obscured his writings. The Iliad 
and the Odyssey have outlived the walls of 
Troy. Not one word of his everlasting writ- 
ings has been lost since the days of Pisistra- 
tus, though they were not collected and pub- 
lished during the author's life, but were merely 
sung and retained by memory. The writings 
of both Homer and Shakspere " like a mighty 
ship have passed over the sea of time, not 
leaving a mere ideal track, which soon alto- 
gether disappears, but leaving a train of glory 
in its wake, present and enduring, daily act- 
ing upon our minds, and ennobling us by 
grand thoughts and images." 

I conjure my readers not to let " Shaks- 
pere be hurled from his throne, and made to 
abdicate or give up the sceptre of that glori- 
ous kingdom of English letters over which he 
has for nearly three hundred years ruled su- 



BA CON versus SHA KSPERE. 1 4 g 

preme, by a free-thinking scoffer like Nathan- 
iel Holmes, without carefully examining into 
the qualifications of the " Usurper Bacon." 
I ask them to bear with me while I say a 
few words upon the internal evidence of 
Shakspere's claims. 

He has left us rare words, idioms, phrases, 
epithets, and qualifying terms that are not 
found in the writings of Bacon. His use of 
contradictory terms to intensify the expression 
of a thought is one of the characteristics of 
his style ; in this particular the difference be- 
tween the writings of Shakspere and Bacon is 
only too apparent. 

Charles W. Stearns, in his delightful and 
refreshing volume * has collected these pecu- 
liar epithets, contradictory phrases, and qual- 
ifying terms and pointed out Shakspere's use 
of what is termed in Rhetoric, the " trans- 
ferred epithet," which favours the brevity re- 



* The Shakspere Treasury of Wisdom and Knowl- 
edge. Putnam & Sons, New York, 1869. 



1 5 o BA CON versus SHA KSPERE. 

quired in Dramatic writing, and cited the 
following examples : " Sixth part of each 1 A 
trembling contribution? * 

The term " trembling " is here transferred 
from the person paying the money to the 
money itself, and makes us instantly compre- 
hend and sympathize with the emotions caused 
by the oppressive exaction of the tax-gatherer. 
" The wry-necked fife'' — the small and straight 
musical instrument, when played upon, causing 
the player to twist his neck awry. " Frighted 
fields'' 'f and "Stumbling night" % convey at 
once the idea of herds being frightened in the 
fields, and of a person stumbling in the dark- 
ness of the night. " Faint primrose beds " 
means that their odour caused a pleasant lan- 

* Henry VIII. Act I. 2. Speech of the King 
relative to the exactions levied by Wolsey on his 
subjects, the sixth part of their substance to be lev- 
ied without delay, under pretence of the King's wars 
in France. 

f I. Henry IV. Act III. 1. 

% King John. Act V, 5. 



BA COX versus SHA KSPERE. 1 5 1 

guor to those lying on them. We also find 
dying deck ; guilty doors ; unshrinking station. 
The passages in which they occur when read 
with the context will thoroughly explain the 
meaning of the transferred epithet. 

Shakspere's list of epithets and qualifying 
terms are given at great length by Chas. W. 
Stearns, hundreds of examples, which may be 
greatly extended by running the eye down 
almost any page of Mary Cowden Clarke's 
Concordance, though such a method for per- 
fecting the list is not to be recommended, but 
the rather, as Stearns suggests, by way of a 
pleasing and profitable exercise, the students 
of Shakspere should carefully read through 
his plays and poems and sonnets for the pur- 
pose of classifying his characteristic phrases 
and expressions. The more this is done by 
the students the more thoroughly will they be 
convinced that Bacon did not write the works 
of Shakspere. 

Take our poet's scathing denunciations 
and marvellous epithets, when he wishes to 



152 



BACON versus SHAKSPERE. 



make vice repugnant and exhibit the monster 
in all its native hideousness, with " the primal 
eldest course upon't." " One after another," 
says a modern critic,* " in dismal procession} 
he leads the culprits out, to take their place 
in a pillory that will last as long as language, 
making them hateful in a single line, some- 
times in a single epithet — " Lean faced Envy;" 
"Back-wounding Calumny;" "Tiger-footed 
Rage ; " " Vaulting Ambition ; " " Viperous 
Slander," " whose tongue outvenoms all the 
worms of Nile ; " Jealousy, " The Green-eyed 
Monster;" Ingratitude, "The Marble-hearted 
Fiend ; " " More hideous than the Sea Mon- 
ster ! " and that most heinous form of it " Filial 
Ingratitude " he puts it in its perfect place in 
these two lines : — 

Is it not as this mouth should tear this hand 
For lifting food to't ? 

Avarice the " ambitious foul impurity," that 



* Bible Truths with Shaksperian parallels, by 
James Brown, 1864. 



BACOX versus SHAKSPERE. 153 

" grows with such pernicious root." The 

Deceitfulness, 

Which to betray doth wear an angel's face, 
Seize with an eagle's talons. 

The relentless implacability that is beastly, 
savage, devilish. The deep duplicity that can 
" smile and smile, and be a villain." The Hypo- 
crisy, that " with devotion's visage, and pious 
action," can " sugar o'er the Devil himself." 

There is nothing like these epithets in 
Bacon's writings — no parallels. In these mat- 
ters Shakspere was not a plagiarist or imita- 
tor of Bacon, and for this reason, that there does 
not occur in the prose writings of Bacon any- 
thing of the kind to imitate. The philosopher's 
expressions of thought are more logical, he does 
not require the abundant use of qualifying adjec- 
tives and qualifying terms, which are to the Poet 
what colours are to the painter. The imagina- 
tion of the poet may be compared to the gorg- 
eous colouring of such painters as Rubens 
Titian, and Turner ; whereas, the dry facts of 
the philosopher may be compared to the works 



1 5 4 BA CON versus SUA KSPERE. 

of the etcher and engraver, yet capable of great 
beauty of expression, as in the prints of Rem- 
brandt, Morghen and Woollet. 

I desire not to detract anything from 
Bacon, neither do I wish to unduly exalt Shaks- 
pere, nor to be accused of blind admiration of 
him. Arcades Ambo, "twins of learning;" 
"two incomparable men," one the " Prince of 
Poets," the other the " Prince of Philoso- 
phers." In the reign of Elizabeth they held 
the position that Raffaelle and Titian held in 
art; one for drawing, the other for painting. 
The Poet, the Philosopher, and the Painter, 
each and severally, had consummate abilities and 
are deserving all the praise bestowed on them 
by those who are familiar with their writings 
and works. Sir Joshua Reynolds, in one of 
his discourses, says : — " Raffaelle and Titian 
seemed to have looked at nature for different 
purposes ; they had the power of extending 
their view to the whole ; the one looked only 
to the general effect produced by form, the 
other as produced by colour." So may it be 



BA COX versus SHA KSPERE. 1 5 5 

said of Bacon and Shakspere — they looked at 
nature differently, more particularly human 
nature. 

In the power of delineating human nature 
and in the creation of characters, no comparison 
can be instituted between them ; in these gifts 
Shakspere stands pre-eminent and unrivalled. 
Like as we turn our eyes to Titian to find ex- 
cellence with regard to colour and listfit and 
shade in the highest degree, so we turn our 
eyes to Shakspere for all the varying light and 
shade in man. His range takes in all be- 
tween, and includes the loftiest and the lowli- 
est characters ; he makes all his characters ex- 
hibit themselves ; there was no human great- 
ness he could not portray. And not content 
with the chiaroscuro, as it were, of human 
nature, he has coloured his drama with glori- 
ous beings that "look not like inhabitants of 
the earth and yet are on it." Bacon's mental 
constitution was utterly distinct from Shaks- 
pere's, he lacked that Genius, that deep poetic 
fire, that breadth of sympathy which embraced 



1 5 6 BA CON versus SHA KSPERE. 

all nature from " the soft and tender fork of 
a poor worm," or the "envious worm " that 



galls the infants of the spring 



Too oft, before their buttons be disclosed. 

Hamlet Act I. 3 
or that bites the bud 

Ere he can spread his sweet leaves to the air, 
Or dedicate his beauty to the same. 

Titus Andronicus Act III. 2 
or the 

Poor harmless fly 
That with his pretty buzzing melody, 
Came here to make us merry, and thou hast kill'd him. 

Measure for Measure Act III. 1 
or, 

The poor beetle, that we tread upon 
In corporal sufferance, finding a pang as great 
As when a giant dies." 

to 

The kind life-rend'ring pelican. 

Hamlet Act IV. 5 
or to the 

Poor deer weeping in the needless stream, 

making a testament 

As worldlings do, giving their sum of more 
To that which hath too much. 

As You Like It Act II. 2 



BACOX versus SHAKSPERE. 



: 57 



or to 



The hot and fiery steed 
Which his aspiring rider seem'd to know, 
With slow but stately pace keeping on his course. 
Richard II. Act V. 2 

In short, Bacon lacked that " milk of human 
kindness," that large-hearted sympathy for the 
whole human race which in the aggregate was 
Shakspere. 

Thomas Carlyle, who is no mean authority, 
and whose influence over contemporaneous 
literature still continues powerful, says in one 
of his lectures on Heroes and Hero Worship : — 

" The calm creative perspicacity of Shaks- 
pere is unexampled. The thing Shakspere 
looks at reveals not this or that place of it, 
but its inmost heart and generic secret: it 
dissolves itself as in light before him, so that 
he discerns the perfect structure of it. Crea- 
tive, we said ; poetic creation, what is this but 
seeing the thing sufficiently ? The word that 
will describe the thing, follows of itself from 
such clear intense sight of the thing. And 



1 5 8 BA CON versus SUA KSPERE.. 

is not Shakspere's morality, his valour, can- 
dour, tolerance, truthfulness ; his whole victori- 
ous strength and greatness, which can tri- 
umph, visible there, too ? Great as the world ! 
No twisted poor convex-concave mirror, re- 
flecting all objects with its own convexities 
and concavities ; a perfectly level mirror : — 
that is to say withal, if we will understand it, 
a man justly related to all things and men, a 
good man. It is truly a lordly spectacle how 
this great soul takes in all kinds of men and 
objects, a Falstaff, an Othello, a Juliet, a Cori- 
olanus ; sets them all forth to us in their 
round completeness ; loving, just, the equal 
brother of all. NOVUM ORGAN UM, and 
all the intellect you will find in BACON, is 
of a quite secondary order ; earthy, material 
poor in comparison with this. Among mod- 
ern men, one finds, in strictness, almost noth- 
ing of the same rank. Goethe alone, since 
the days of Shakspere, reminds me of it. Of 
him, too, you say that he saw the object ; you 
may say what he himself says of Shakspere : — 



BA CON versus SHA KSPERE. x 5 9 

' His characters are like watches with dial 
plates of transparent crystal ; they show yott 
the hours like others, and the inward mechan- 
ism also is all visible' " 

If we are indebted to Bacon for his zeal- 
ous and powerful labours to recall Philosophy 
from the study of fanciful systems to the 
careful interrogation and interpretation of 
Nature, the collecting and properly arranging 
of well-ascertained facts, and for those maxims 
for the conduct of philosophical enquiry which 
have contributed to the vast progress physi- 
cal science has made since his time, we are 
indebted to Shakspere for clothing the "fos- 
siliferous cake-dried axioms " of some ancient 
and modern philosophers with such freshness 
and rejuvenescence, and launching them with 
such force, emphasis, and originality that they 
strike us again as if for the first time. 

" My blood," says Othello, " begins my safer 
guide to rule, and passion obscures my best 
judgment;" and I feel similarly oppressed in 
having to write so very much to prove what 



1 6 o BA CON versus SHA KSPERE. 

scarcely demands proof for those who have 
impartially and carefully read and reflected on 
the writings of these two great men. I feel a 
sort of ill humour rising up within me at the 
" monstrous labour " I have given myself, and 
the waste of time it will be to my readers in 
pursuing the subject any further — yet there 
may be some who may want to make " assur- 
ance doubly sure," and to whom other argu- 
ments might not be amiss. 

The first translation of the Bible into the 
vernacular, was that by William Tyndale, a Glos- 
tershire man, who considered his native vocabu- 
lary more significant and equally as elegant 
as those polysyllabic expressions derived from 
the language of Ancient Rome. The Tyndale 
and Coverdale Bible of 1535* which our fore- 
fathers welcomed so warmly, and suffered so 
much for, is the basis of the 161 1 edition now 
in common use. The vernacular dialect of 



* Geneva Bible, 2nd year of Elizabeth's reign, 
1560. Bishop's Bible, 1568. 



BACON versus SHAKSPERE. 161 

the Cotswold district of Glostershire, and that 
of the Stratford district of Warwickshire is very 
similar ; any one familiar with it and with his 
Bible and his Shakspere must have noticed 
how many words and expressions used by 
Tyndale in his translation, and by our poet in 
his plays, are to this day commonly used by 
the peasantry of Gloster and Warwick Shires, 
some of whom have never read a line of 
Shakspere, and are only familiar with the Bible 
through the services of that Church, where the 
Daily Lessons and the Psalms are read in pure 
English. This I can testify from having been 
partially educated in the village upon whose 
" knowl " stands a monument erected, since my 
school days, to the memory of the martyr who, 
on the 6th day of October, 1536, perished at 
the stake for translating that edition of the 
New Testament which he had promised to 
give to the ploughboys of Glostershire. 

From a most delightful book, which ought 
to be in the library of every lover of Shakspere, 
written by James Walter, and entitled " Shaks- 



1 6 2 BA CON versus SHA KSPERE. 

peares Home and Rural Life" with illustrations 
of Localities and Scenes around Stratford-on- 
Avon by the Heliotype process,* I have taken 
the following excerpts because they are so apt 
and conclusive for my argument, and better ex- 
press what I know and feel on the subject than 
any words of mine could : — 

" John R. Wise, who has discoursed sweetly, 
and with profound knowledge and appreciation 
of the great poet, has carefully noted his use of 
Warwickshire provincialisms and allusions to 
his native county; as also the more striking 
phrases found in his plays, and which are still 
to be heard in the mouths of the Warwick- 
shire peasantry, who, now, more than anybody 
else 

Speak the tongue 
That Shakspere spake. 

" If Shakspere's own style and manner, 
which is undoubtedly the case, has had a 
marked influence on subsequent writers, and 

* Longmans, Green, Reader, and Dyer, London : 
1874 



BA C0.\ ' versus SHA KSPERE. 1 63 

even on the English language itself, still his 
native county left some traces of its dialect 
even upon him." 

" Johnson, himself born in a neighbouring 
county, first pointed out that the expression 
" a mankind witch," in the " Winter's Tale " 
(Act II. scene 3), was a phrase in the Midland 
Counties for a violent woman. And Malone, 
too, showed that the singular expression in the 
" Tempest " (Act I. scene 2), " we cannot miss 
him," was a provincialism of the same district. 
It is not asserted that certain phrases and ex- 
pressions are to be found nowhere else but 
in Shakspere and Warwickshire. But it is 
interesting to know that the Warwickshire 
girls still speak of their " long purples " and 
" love in idleness ; " and that the Warwickshire 
boys have not forgotten their " deadmen's 
finders ; " and that the " nine mens morris " is 
still played on the corn-bins of the Warwick- 
shire farm stables, and still scored upon the 
greensward ; and that Queen Titania would 
not have now to complain, as she did in the 



1 64 BACON versus SHAKSPERE. 

Midsummer Night's Dream, that it was choked 
up with mud ; and that " Master Slender " 
would find his shovel-board still marked on 
many a public house table and window sill ; 
and that he and " Master Fenton," and " good 
Master Brook," would, if now alive, hear them- 
selves still so called." 

" Take now, for instance, the word " deck," 
which is so common throughout the Midland 
Counties, but in Warwickshire is so often re- 
stricted to the sense of a hand of cards, and 
which gives a far better interpretation to 
Gloster's speech in the Third Part of " King 
Henry VI." (Act V. Scene i):— 

Alas, that Warwick had no more forecast, 
But whiles he thought to steal the single ten, 
The King was slyly finger' d from the deck : 

as, of course there mio-ht be more Kings than 
one in the pack, but not necessarily so in the 
hand. The word " forecast," too, both as verb 
and noun, is very common throughout both 
Warwickshire and the neighbouring Counties. 
This word " forecast " is also used by Spenser, 



BACON versus SHAKSPERE. 165 

and others of Shakspere's contemporaries ; 
and, though obsolete, except among the peas- 
antry of the Midland districts, is still employed 
by the best American Authors." * 

Again in Autolycus's song, in the " Winter's 
Tale " (Act IV. Scene 2) : — 

The white sheet bleaching on the hedge — 

With heigh ! the sweet birds, O, how the)- sing ! 

Doth set my pugging-tooth on edge, 
For a quart of ale is a dish for a King. 

All the commentators here explain pugging- 
tooth,! as a thievish tooth, an explanation which 
certainly itself requires to be explained ; but 
most Warwickshire country people could tell 
them that pugging-tooth was the same as peg- 
ging or peg-tooth, that is the canine or dog- 



* " Forecasts " used in the daily Weather bulletins, 
issued from Washington. See Charles W. Stearns's 
"Shakspere Treasury" for Americanisms in Shakspere. 

f See Nares, his Glossary, Words, &c, illustrative 
of the works of English Authors, particularly Shaks- 
pere and his Contemporaries. London: 1822. 



1 66 BA CON versus SHA KSPERE. 

tooth. " The child has not its pegging-teeth 
yet," old women still say. And thus all the 
difficulty as to the meaning is at once cleared. 

But there is an expression used both by 
Shakspere and his contemporaries, which 
must not be so quickly passed over. Wher- 
ever there has been an unusual disturbance or 
ado, the lower orders round Stratford-on-Avon 
invariably characterize it by the phrase " there 
has been old work * to-day," which well inter- 
prets the Porter's allusion in " Macbeth " (Act 
III. Scene 3), " If a man were porter of hell- 
gate, he should have old turning the key," 
which is simply explained in the notes as " fre- 
quent," but which means far more. So, in the 
Merchant of Venice (Act IV. Scene 2,) Portia 
says, " We shall have oldj swearing; " that is, 



* Similar to the provincial phrase " great to do." 
f Old is used occasionally in the sense of custom- 
ary, or familiar, or usual. Your husband is in his old 
lunes again, i. e., customary fit of lunacy. M. W. of 
W. Act IV. 2. " Thou knowest my old ward," says 
Falstaff. I. Henry IV. Act II. 4. Old acquaintances 
of this isle. Othello, Act II. 1. 



BACON versus SHAKSPERE. 167 

very hard swearing; and in the " Merry Wives 

of Windsor " (Act I. Scene 4), we find " Here 

will be an old abusing of God's patience, and 

the King's English ; " and in the Second Part 

of King Henry IV. (Act II. Scene 4), " By the 

Mass, here will be old Utis? * And so also, 

in " Much Ado about Nothing " (Act V. Scene 

2), Ursula says : — " Madam, you must come to 

your Uncle ; yonder's old coil\ at home ; " and 

to this day, round Stratford is this use of 

"old" still kept up by the lower classes." 

In the Duke of Bourbon's speech (King 

Henry V. Act III. Scene 5) we have 

I will sell my dukedom 
To buy a slobberly and a dirty farm. 

Slobbery or slobberly, is to this day applied to 

the wet dirty Warwickshire by-roads ; in Glos- 

tershire, slobbery would be now used in the 



* Utis or Utas, the eighth day, or the space of 
eight days, after any festival. " Utas of Saynte Hil- 
arye," Holinshed. 

f Coil. — Noise, tumult, difficulty, trouble — mortal 
coil. Hamlet, Act III. 1. Old coil, much or great 
tiouble, abundant, frequent. 



1 68 BACON versus SHAKSPERE. 

sense of spilling water on a floor, or of a child 
while feeding, messing or wetting the front of 
his " pin-be-fore." Again we have slabby for 
wet clayish ground, or for a glutinous kind of 
mixture, as in the incantation of the Witches 
in Macbeth (Act IV. Scene i). 

Make the gruel thick and slab. 
In Hamlet the grave digger says of himself 
" I have been sexton here, man and boy, thirty 
years," a common Warwickshire expression to 
denote a great length of time, — I have been 
employed here, man and boy, so many years. 
" Make her grave straight? Straight for quick- 
ly, is common enough in most of the Midland 
Counties. " Do't straight," and also " I'll come 
straight," are as " familiar as household words." 
Straight and straightway in the sense of quickly, 
at once, instantly, immediately, are commonly 
used by Shakspere. In the New Testament, 
" And they straightway left their Nets " (St. 
Matthew IV. 20). " And they went into Caper- 
naum ; and straightway on the Sabbath day He 
entered the synagogue " (St. Mark I. 2 1). " And 



BACON versus SHAKSPERE. 169 

when they were come out of the ship, straight- 
way they knew Him " (St. Mark VI. 54). " Then 
fell she down straightway at his feet and yielded 
up the ghost " (Acts V. 10). " I sent straightway 
to thee " (Acts XXIII. 30). Straightway means 
instantly in all these texts. 

A peculiar use of the verb " quoth," the 
Saxon preterite of to speak, is very noticeable 
among the common people in Warwickshire. 
" Jerk, quoth the ploughshare," that is, the 
ploughshare went jerk. 

It is universally applied to inanimate things, 

and is used precisely in this sense by the 

Nurse in Romeo and Juliet (Act I. Scene 3), 

" Shake, quoth the dovehouse." In the fable of 

the Belly and the Members in " Coriolanus," 

the Stomach gives this reply to the rebellious 

limbs : — 

True it is, my incorporate friends, quoth he, 
That I receive the general food at first, 
Which you do live upon : and fit it is, &c. 

Again there is a peculiar use of the per- 
sonal pronoun in Warwickshire, which cannot 



i 7 o 



BACON versus SHAKSPERE. 



be better illustrated than by Shakspere him- 
self. Thus, in Romeo and Juliet (Act II. 
Scene 4), Mercutio says of Tybalt, " He rests 
me his minion rest ; " and Hotspur, in the First 
Part of King Henry IV. (Act III. Scene 1), 
thus speaks ; — 

See how this river comes me, cranking in 
And cuts me, from the best of all my land, 
A huge half moon, a monstrous cantle * out. 

Abbot, in his Shaksperian Grammar, has 
pointed out that the pronoun me is very often 
used by Shakspere, in virtue of its represent- 
ing the old dative, where we should use for me, 

from me, with me. 

Give me your present to one Master Bassanio. 

M. of V. II. 2. 
Who does 7ne this ? 

Hamlet II. 2. 
Sayest thou me so ? 

II. Hen. VI. II. 1. 
The sack that thou hast drunk me could have bought me 
lights as good, cheap at the dearest chandlers in Europe. 

I Hen. IV. III. 3. 



* Cantle, a part or share. 



BACON versus SHAKSPERE. 171 

He pluck'd me ope his doublet. 

Jul. Cae. I. 2. 
He pluck'd me to her trencher. 

He thrusts me himself into the company. 

T. G. of Ver. IV. 4. 
The skilful shepherd peel'd me certain wands. 

M. of Ver. I. 3. 
Knock trie here, — 

T. of Sh. I. 2. 
I made me no more ado .... I followed me close. 

I Hen. IV. II. 4. 
But hear me this. 

Tw. Nt. VI. 1. 
You'll bear tne a bang for that. 

Jul. Cas. III. 2. 
And hold me pace in deep experiment. 

I Hen. IV. III. 1. 

Falstaff says, in praise of good sherris-sack, 
in the Second Part of King Henry IV. Act 
IV. Scene 3, " It ascends me into the brain, 
dries me there all the foolish and dull and 
crudy vapours." Pandarus in Troilus and 
Cressida (Act I. Scene 2), thus describes the 
love of Helen for Troilus. " She came, and 
puts me her white hand to his clover chin." 
The expressive compound blood-bolter d, in 
Macbeth (Act IV. Scene 1), which the critics 



1 7 2 BA CON verstis SHA KSPERE. 

have all thought meant blood-stained ; now 
bolter is peculiarly a Warwickshire word signi- 
fying to clot, collect, or cake, as snow does in 
a horse's hoof, thus giving the phrase a far 
greater intensity of meaning. There is the word 
gull in Timon of Athens (Act II. Scene i). 

But I do fear 
When every feather sticks in his own wing, 
Lord Timon will be left a naked .gull, 
Which flashes now a phoenix ; 

which most of the critics have thought alluded 
to a sea gull, whereas it means an unfledged 
nestling, which to this day is so called in War- 
wickshire. And this interpretation throws a 
light on a passage in First Part of " King 
Henry VI" (Act V. Scene i). 

You used me so 
As that ungentle gull, the cuckoo's bird, 
Useth the sparrow ; — 

where some notes amusingly say that the word 
alludes to the voracity of the cuckoo. The 
Warwickshire farmer's wives, even now, call 
their young goslings gulls. 



BA CON versus SHA KSPERE. 1 7 3 

Contain yourself is a very common War- 
wickshire phrase for restrain yourself ; Timon 
says to his creditor's servant, " contain yourself 
good friend." (Timon of Athens, Act II. Scene 
2). In Troilus and Cressida (Act V. Scene 2) 
Ulysses says : — 

O contain yourself, 
Your passion draws ears hither. 

In the Two Gentlemen of Verona (Act IV. 
Scene 4), we find Launce using the still rarer 
phrase of " keep himself," in the same sense to 
his dog Crab, when he says, " O ! 'tis a foul 
thing when a cur cannot keep (i. e. restrain) 
himself in all companies." 

" It is after all," says James Walter, " touch- 
ing to think that, amidst the change that is 
ever going on, the same phrases that Shaks- 
pere spake, are still spoken in his native 
county, and that the flowers are still called by 
the same names which he called them." 

" Sometimes," says a recent writer who 
visited Stratford-on-Avon and its neighbour- 
hood, " the cottagers unconsciously quoted 



174 BA CON versus SHA KSPERE. 

Shakspere's familiar phrases — as Bedouins 
quote the Bible — and use curious old Warwick- 
shire words which are rarely heard elsewhere, 
but which carry us back irresistibly to the days 
when Shakspere was wandering here, and work- 
ing for us for all time." 

From Shakspereana Genealogica* in the 
chapter headed " Remarks on Names belong, 
ing to Warwickshire, alluded to in several 
Plays," the following excerpts are taken : — 

" Mr. Halliwell has shown that persons of 
the name of Ford, Page, Horne, or Herne 
belonged to Stratford.f In the records of the 
borough, published by that excellent writer, 
notices of receipts and payments are found as 
follows : — 

1597, R. of Thomas Fordes wiffe vi s. viij d. 
1585, Paid to Herne for iij dayes work, ij s. vj d. 

A daughter of Robert Ford was buried at 

o 

Stratford in 1562-3. John Page is found there 



* Compiled by George Russell French, Architect, pub- 
lished by Macmillan & Co. : London & Cambridge, 1869. 
t Merry Wives of Windsor — Dramatis Persons. 



BA COX versus SNA k'SPERE. 1 7 5 

in 1 566 ; and one of the same name lived in 
Henley Street in 1 585 ; Joan, wife of John 
Page, was buried in January, 1583-4; John 
Page and his wife are mentioned in the will of 
Agnes Arden, 1580; a John Page died in 1612. 
Mr. Halliwell also proved that a Thomas 
Page lived in Windsor in 1562 ; and that 
several persons of the name of Ford resided 
there from 1571 to 1600; and also that persons 
of the name of Evans belonged to Windsor in 
the latter half of the sixteenth century. But it 
is quite possible that the Poet selected the name 
of the quaint " Welsh Parson," Sir Hugh 
Evans, from an acquaintance in Stratford, 
where several Welsh families resided in his 
time. John Evans is found there in 1585 ; 
Evans Rice, Evans Meredith, and Hugh ap . 
John, all flourished there at the same period. 

In Lodge's Rosalind, or Euphues Golden 
Legacie, the story which furnished Shakspere 
with the plot of his charming comedy, it is 
stated that the old Knight, called Sir John of 
Bordeaux, had three sons, Saladyne, Fernan- 



1 7 6 BA CON versus SHA KSPERE. 

dyne and Rosader ; these names are altered by 
the Poet to Oliver, Jaques, and Orlando .* Now 
it is very probable that Shakspere took the 
name of his Knight from an old but extinct 
family of great note in Leicestershire and War- 
wickshire, whose memory was long preserved in 
the latter county ; Sir Ernald, or Arnold de 
Boys, Arnold being easily transposed to Roland 
and thence we have Orlando. The manor of 
Weston-in-Arden was held by Sir Ernald de 
Boys, temp Edw. I. paying yearly to the Earl of 
Leicester, to whom he was Seneschal, "one 
hound called a Brache, and seven pence in 
money for all services;" Dugdale, Warwick- 
shire, page 41. The species of hound herein 
specified illustrates a passage in the Induction 
to the Taming of the Shrew, where the lord 
enters from hunting : — 

Huntsman, I charge thee, tender well my hounds ; 

Bathe Merriman, — the poor cur is embbss'd, 

And couple Clowder with the deep-mouth'd Brache. 



* See Shakspere's Library, a collection of the ancient 
Novels, Romances, Legends, Poems and Histories, used 
by Shakspere; by J. Payne Collier, Esq., F.S.A. 



BA CON versus SHA KSPERE. i j y 

There were four generations in succession 
of Lords of the Manor of Weston-in-Ardcn, 
each of whom is called Sir Ernald de Bosco, or 
de Boys. 

The name of the melancholy Lord Jaques 
belongs to Warwickshire, where it is pro- 
nounced as one syllable ; " Thomas Jakes of 
Wonersh " was one of the List of Gentry of 
the Shire, 12 Henry VI. 1433. At the sur- 
render of the Abbey of Kenilworth, 26 Henry 
VIII. 1535, the Abbot was Simon Jakes, who 
ha^l the large pension of 100/. per annum 
granted to him. Monasticon, Vol. VI. 

A family by the name of Sly, rendered 
famous by their place in the Induction of the 
Taming of the Shrew, resided at Stratford, and 
elswhere in the County, in the Poet's time ; and 
he no doubt drew the portrait of the drunken 
tinker from the life. Stephen Sly was a labourer 
in the employ of William Combe, 13 Jac. I. 
1 61 6. (Page 330 Halliwell's S tratford Records). 
In the Borough Records there is an entry of a 
fine paid in 1630, — " Item of Joan Slie for 



1 7 8 BA CON versus SUA KSPERE. 

breaking the Sabbath by traveling, 3s. 4c!." 
Life of SJiakspere, page 115. In Scene 2 (In- 
duction), wherein Bartholomew the Page per- 
sonates " the lady " of the supposed lord, 
Christopher Sly asks the real lord, disguised as 
a servant, — 

What must I call her ? 
Lord. Madam, 
Sly A'lce Madam, or Joan Madam ? 

One of the servants tells Kit Sly, — 

Why, Sir, you know no house, nor such maid ; 
Nor no such men, as you have reckon'd up — 
As Stephen Sly, and old John Naps of Greece, &c* 

It would seem quite certain that Stephen 
and Joan Sly were the parents of the drunken 
tinker, and that the whole family would be well 
known to many a spectator of the play, especi- 
ally if acted in Warwickshire. The name of 
the page was that of one of Shakspere's wife's 
brothers, Bartholomew Hathaway. Forty three 



* Mr. Halliwell conjectures that " Old John Naps of 
Greece," should be of " Greet " which is a hamlet in the 
Parish of Winchcombe, Co. Gloucester, but at no great 
distance from Stratford. 



BA COA' versus SNA KSPERE. x 7g 

years after Shakspere's death another Warwick- 
shire poet alludes to the " Sheer ale " which 
" Marian Hacket, the fat ale-wife of Wincot," 
scored against Kit Sly* Sir Aston Cockain, 
in 1659, addressed an Epistle in verse to his 
friend (Sir) " Clement Fisher of Wincot ; " the 
following lines have been often quoted : — 

" Shakspere, your Wincot ale hath much renowivd, 
That fox'd a beggar so, by chance was found 
Sleeping, that there needed not many a word 
To make him believe he was a lord. 
But you affirme, and it seems most eager 
'Twill make a Lord as drunk as any beggar, 
Bid Norton brew such ale as Shakspere fancies 
Did put Kit Sly into such lordly trances ; 
And let us meet there, for a fit of gladness, 
And drink ourselves merry in sober sadness." 

The drunken tinker calls himself " old Sly's 
son of Burton Heath ; " this locality may be 



* Induction. Sc. ii. — Sly says : — " Ask Marian Hacket, 
the fat ale-wife of Wincot, if she know me not : if she say 
I am not fourteen pence on the score for sheer ale, score 
me up for the lying'st knave in Christendom." 

The name of Hacket is still found in the neighbourhood 
of Stratford. 



1 8 o BA CON versus SUA KSPERE. 

meant for Barton-on-the-Heath, which is only a 
few miles to the south of Stratford. 

In the serious business of The Taming of 
the Shrew, one of Petruchio's servants is called 
" Curtis ; " this was a Stratford name. Anne 
Curteys, widow, a knitter was living there in 
1607; and John Curteys, a carpenter is found 
therein 161 5. In Petruchio's household twelve 
or thirteen of his men servants are named, of 
whom, one only, the " ancient, trusty, pleasant 
Grumio" belongs to Italy, all the rest are most 
thoroughly English; and as Philip, Nathaniel, 
Nicholas, Joseph, and Gabriel, are not common 
names, we incline to believe that Shakspere 
took them from his contemporaries, Philip 
Henslowe, Nathaniel Field, Nicholas Tooley, 
Joseph Taylor, and, probably, Gabriel Harvey, 
a poet, the friend of Spenser .* 

Among the characters in the play of Henry 
V. are three soldiers, whose Christian names are 



* The four first named were actors — see Colliers's 
Annals of the Stage, 1831. John Murray, London. 



BA CON versus SHA KSPERE. 1 8 1 

found in the Folio of 1623, and therefore very 
properly retained in this Edition, although 
usually omitted. " John Bates, Alexander 
Court, and Michael Williams," are private 
soldiers in King Henry's army. These sur- 
names all belong to Stratford, at the Poet's day, 
and it is remarkable that no biographer has 
yet noticed this fact ; and we are indebted to 
Mr. Halliwell's Records for these names, al- 
though they are not alluded to by him in his 
Notes to the play. In the Chronicle Historie 
of Henry the Fift, no names are given to the 
" three Souldiers ; " from which omission we 
gather that Shakspere, in the revised play, sup- 
plied the surnames from certain Stratford 
families of his acquaintance: 

The valiant but choleric Captain Fluellen, 
bears a Stratford name ; William Fluellen being 
mentioned in the company of John Shakspere 
and George Bardolf as recusants, and not com- 
ing to Church, in 1592. Anne Fluellen, widow, 
lived at Stratford, in 1604, and appears in the 
Chamberlain's books. 



1 82 BACON versus SHAKSPERE 

Many places in Warwickshire are the scenes 
of action, or are mentioned in the plays. In 
the First part of King Henry IV. Falstaff 
arrives near Coventry with his " scarecrows," 
as he calls his 150 pressed men, "slaves as 
ragged as Lazarus in the painted cloth," with 
whom he is ashamed to march through 
Coventry, on their way to Sutton-Coldfield 
where they are to rest that night ; Act IV. 
Scene 2. And when Prince Hal enters on the 
scene, Falstaff accosts him in his familiar 
fashion, — " What Hal ? How now, mad wag ! 
what a devil dost thou in Warwickshire? 

In the Third part of King Henry VI. Act 
IV. Sc. 2, the action is laid in " A Plain in 
Warwickshire : " and Sc. 3 is Edward's Camp 
near Warwick. One of the architectural 
glories of Warwickshire is introduced by name. 
Second part of King Henry VI. Act IV. Sc. 4, 

My gracious Lord, retire to Killingworth, 
Until a power be raised to put them down. 

and the action of Sc. 9 is laid at Kenilworth 

Castle. Enter King, andQuEEN on the Terrace. 



BACOX versus SHAKSPERE. 1S3 

It seems strange that after a lapse of nearly 
three hundred years, many of the striking 
phrases found in the plays should still be 
heard among the peasantry of Warwickshire, 
aye, and some of the sir-names are still famil- 
iar to them 

To my mind this internal evidence is worth 
more than all the ifs and conjectures of Na- 
thaniel Holmes — the ambiguos voces — about 
Bacon and his parallels. As existing monu- 
ments, sculptures, gems, coins, and medals most 
powerfully and satisfactorily speak for them- 
selves and demonstrate the truth of Revela- 
tion in language which no sophistry can evade, 
so the dialect, idioms, and provincialisms of the 
Midland Counties attest the fact that the author 
of Shakspere's plays must have known War- 
wickshire well ; and we know Shakspere to have 
been born and buried at Stratford-on-Avon. 

Under his monument in the chancel of 
Holy Trinity Church are these words : — 
Judicio Pylium, genio Socratem, arte Maronem. 
In judgment a Nestor, in genius a Socrates, in art a Virgil. 



1 84 BACON versus SHAKSPERE. 

which, of course, according to the " Baconian 
Theorists," is a lying epithet, " a huge transla- 
tion of hypocrisy." The line is only applica- 
ble to Bacon, who was the morning star of 
poetry, the guide, the pioneer of all philosophy ; 
the great Lord Chancellor who had all the 
attributes of a poet — breadth of thought ; 
depth of insight; weight of matter; brevity, 
force, and beauty of expression ; brilliant met- 
aphor ; using all nature as a symbol of thought, 
and possessing that supreme power of imag- 
ination which is necessary to make an artistic 
creator, adding man to the Universe. 

Thousands of scholars, reflective beings, 
honest and impartial judges and critics think 
the line only applicable to Shakspere. From 
the Wilds of Canada, the Prairies of America, 
and the Plains of Australia, many loving Pil- 
grims have gone to his monument and wept 
after reading the second line of the epitaph : — 
Terra tegit, populus moeret, Olympus habet. 

The earth covers him, the people mourn for him, 

[Olympus has him. 



BA COX versus SHA KSPERE. 185 

and with their 

Sorrow's eye, glazed with blinding tears 
have gone to that flat stone bearing the follow- 
ing inscription : — * 

Good friend for Jesus' sake forbeare, 
To digg the dust encloased heare ; 
Bleste be the man that spares these stones, 
And curst be he that moves my bones ; 

* It is very doubtful whether these lines were written by 
Shakspere — as some have pretended they were — the pro- 
bability is that they were written by the poet's son-in-law, 
Dr. Hall, to whose wife, Susanna, he devised all his real 
estate for life, and then entailed upon her first son and 
his heirs male. It was a stereotyped form, a quatrain very 
generally adopted before Shakspere's time, and occasion- 
ally used after his time in the same way that a similar 
curse in Latin is found in the Catacombs of Rome. On 
not a few of the stones in this ancient place of Christian 
Sepulture, anathemas are pronounced against such impi- 
ous men as shall dare disturb the sanctity of the grave. 

Male Pereat Insepvltvs 

Jaceat Non Resvrgat 

Cvm Jvda Partem Habeat 

Si Quis Sepvlcrvm Hvnc Violaverit. 

(May he perish badly, and, deprived of sepulture, may 



186 BACON versus SHAKSPERE. 

and reverentially watered it with a " teary 
shoure." 

The injunction which the lines convey has 
hitherto been obeyed, the disturbing the poet's 
bones has not been attempted by any sacrileg- 
ist ; but there has been a worse sacrilege wan- 



he lie dead and never rise ; may he share lots with Judas, 
he who' violates this sepulchre). 

Nathaniel Holmes writes thus irreverently of the Poet 
and the Epitaph : — " Shakspere not deeming he had 
written anything worthy of preservation, stole in silence to 
his grave beneath a doggrel Epitaph reputed to have been 
written by himself, and certainly suitable enough for his 
bones, by the side of which the knowing friends, who 
erected a monument over him, caused to be inscribed a 
Latin Memento which might indeed do honor to the ' Star 
of Poets ' (Francis Bacon) : — " 

"Judicio Pylium, genio Socratem, arte Maronem, 
Terra tegit, populus moeret, Olympus habet ; " 

any man might wonder, if he did not laugh outright, to see 
this son of Momus wearing thus his Lion's skin in his 
tomb." 

This is high treason against the crowned head of the 
English Drama. — It is simply monstrous. 



BA CON versus SHA KSPERE. 1 8 7 

tonly and ignorantly committed by these 
" Baconian Theorists " in trying to rob Shaks- 
pere of his literary fame, and disturbing the 
innocent and sacred belief of thousands and tens 
of thousands that Shakspere is himself, not 
Bacon. 



THE END. 



